My novels THE OUTBACK STARS,THE STARS DOWN UNDER and THE STARS BLUE YONDER are about love, duty, and really big spaceships. My stories about sexy firemen, cross-dressing ghosts, gay superheroes and more have appeared in many national, small press and online magazines and anthologies. My master's degree is in Creative Writing, and among other things I teach college composition. All the rest of the dirt is at Sandra McDonald.com.

Jacksonville Friends of the Library Book Sale: 49 books, 8 VHS movies. Two days. $49 total.



Score!

- 2 books by Sherman Alexie

- my favorite Suzanna Brockman novel and my favorite Paul Levine novel.

- short fiction by ZZ Packer, Russell Banks, AS Byatt, and Lucius Shepard, none of whom I've read

- long fiction by Nick Mamatas, Pat Murphy, Nancy Kress, Jonathan Lethem, some of which I've read

- 3 historical mysteries, 2 of them set on sailing ships

- Non fiction about the NYPD police department, the southern Great Lakes, meditation, the GI Bill, meditation, flowers, jobs, religion

- On Writing by Stephen King, because I lost my copy years ago. Actually, I didn't much like it when it first came out, but I like it more now. Books don't change; readers do.

- Biographies of Walt Whitman, Andrew Carnegie, Sela Ward

- Two YA. Ten tables of YA and younger, with the sf mixed in with everything else: I lost the will to keep looking,

- A book about making the movie Titanic.

- Two cookbooks, one rather eclectic

Last but not least - A Pound of Paper, John Baxter's book about being a book lover. I'm with you, John, my buddy, my pal. All I need now are more bookshelves . . .

Thanks to all for the birthday wishes last week! I really enjoyed them. So did my mom, who was counting during the day: "You've got 20!" "You've got 25!" She's a hoot, my mom :-) It's as much her day as it is mine - she had me after several years of trying and loss, and then couldn't see me for 2 weeks because of staph infection :-( But I'm here now! And we had dinner twice last week, so that's nice.

Reading - well, the kittens knocked my reading list behind my desk, which is the size and weight of the bow of the Titanic. Here's the list from memory -

- Luna, by Julie Anne Peters, very powerful, about a teenage boy who wants to be a teenage girl

- Floodland, by Marcus Sedgewick, a middle grade post-a story, nicely done

- Short fiction by Christopher Barzak, Mike Resnick, Stephanie Burgis, Nancy Kress.

- Short fiction by Sherman Alexie, Sam Shepard and Jonathan Franzen in The New Yorker. All very good. Sherman Alexie is my new favorite writer. You can read his story War Dances free online.

- The very awesome October issue of Tin House, one of my favorite magazines. October is a double issue: Hope on one side, Dread on the other. The memoir about Susan Sontag still has me going "Hmmm" two days after reading it; the story by Michael Dahlie is haunting and sly; I'm halfway through the interview with Lorrie Moore, and then it's on to Cory Doctorow's piece.

For two weeks now I have been getting rid of books because of this weekend's library sale at the Jacksonville Fairgrounds. They usually only do it in the spring, but they've had so many donations (or need the money) and they're doing it this month, too. Books books books! Books!

Today I am 35! Again!

I have to teach all morning, and then it's off to the store to buy the official Birthday Refrigerator (1), and then there's dinner with Mom and R and C, and tomorrow dinner with my parents, brother and nieces.

The house elves have graciously returned my passport, which went missing yesterday. (They then stole the book I'm reading, so sad.) The kittens have promised to clean their own litter box.

Over the weekend there was birthday gardening (2) and the making of most excellent chocolate oatmeal cookies.

Wish me a happy 35, won't you?



"

http://www.flickr.com/photos/29278394@N00/ / CC BY 2.0

(1) The refrigerator that came with my house was discontinued sometime in the 1980's. It runs all the time and is in no way energy efficient. Mom and Dad have decided I need a new one. Thanks Mom and Dad!

(2) Gardening is slow around my yard, because it's still 90 degrees every day. And I have guilt over every weed pulled, bush pruned, plant uprooted. Still, gardening was accomplished.

One of the best conversations we had at Blue Heaven this year was about the trap of the Internet, and how much time we lose to surfing, social media, etc. As much as I beg, the kittens won't hide my modem. (Though at times, they accidentally yank the DSL line loose). I'm not willing to install a program that clamps down my network for a predetermined time (Freedom? Is that the program?). And I've tried Leech Block, but just open Safari instead of Firefox to get around it.

This week I started using a very handy program called OfficeTime. It helps you track what you're doing and when. This is how my week has worked out so far:



The two largest slices of the pie: teaching
The third largest slice: surfing
The fourth: writing.

This must change! And change begins with awareness.

How's your pie look, hmmm?

September went too fast, and was full of hoopla - DragonCon! The island! Dying laptops! Classes ending! Classes beginning! - and here are two bits of information I wanted to share:

- John DeNardo let me hold forth on in one of those fun SF Mind Melds. I tried to pick some unconventional ones, like Irene, the Queen of Attolia.

- Romantic Times interviewed me for the October issue, in "Is Sci-Fi Romance Ready to Blast off?" Thanks RT!

The current SF Mind Meld There's an older Mind Meld about gender imbalance in genre publishing that I just read. Some people I like say things I disagree with, and some people I don't like continue to say stupid things. My favorite post is the one by Cat Rambo, who is very smart. That's right here

In other news, I really like Glee because it reminds me of my own days as a high school music geek. I was the socially inept soprano. I have no plans to watch Stargate Universe, the new kid in town. Unless it has singing in it.

Meanwhile, my two new kittens, Sammi and Jensen, turned 5 months old last week. They were tiny when I got them and now quickly gaining on Princess Leia, who has adjusted quite well as long as she's treated as a queen. (I thought about renaming her, but she answers to Her Majesty.) The hardest part about kittens? Getting them to stop traipsing over keyboards. And to get off my chair.

Here I am on Kelleys Island in Ohio, where the company, weather, food and entertainment have all been great. I have one more novel critique to give, and then it's all relaxation until the ferry leaves tomorrow.

Highlights of the trip include:

- the girls hut, aka the House of Spiders
- the Milky Way pie at the Pump - awesome!
- lots of great talk about books, and ccfinlay's theory on urban fantasy
- watching the kids dancing the macarena in the coffee shop
- the boat ride
- the pretty, filled-in quarry
- Marvin and Robin's cooking

Yay for Blue Heaven! Thanks Charlie, for being our fearless leader! And thanks to my fellow workshoppers for all the fabulous conversation.

(c) www.griffith.ws

Some stuff I've read this summer:

Hole in the Sky - YA sf - Pate Hautman: Four teens fight to survive in a post-apocalyptic world (plague) near the Grand Canyon. I liked this not only for the p-a stuff but also the Native American mythology and beautiful details about setting.

Boot Camp - YA - Todd Strasser: This is a disturbing and harrowing story of a teen sent to a juvenile boot camp, and the humiliations and brainwashing that goes on there. Very vivid and not easily forgettable.

The Demon's Lexicon - YA horror - Two brothers, one dead parent, one damaged parent, and lots of supernatural stuff.

The Hunger Games - YA sf - This did not work as well for me as it did for some friends who love it. Maybe "The Running Man" spoiled me forever, but I think the concept (TV reality show, fighting to survive) works better as satire. Richard Dawson, where are you when we need you?

Life as We Knew It - YA sf post-apocalyptic - I'm enjoying this, but haven't finished it yet. Sort of like "Alas, Babylon" in the Midwest.

The Buddha from Brooklyn - non-fiction - This is the fascinating story about a guru from Brooklyn and the people who follow her from New Age-y workship into Buddhism and then back into New Age-y stuff, with lots of missing money and wrecked lives along the way.

I'm always on the look out for YA sf post-apoc recs, so if there's a book you love, please tell me!

I am not at Anticipation this weekend, but hello to all of you who are! Have a great time. I know that birdhousefrog worked very hard to put together the writer's workshops, and I hope they all go well.

Meanwhile, my story "Recipe for Survival" got an honorable mention in the Gardner Dozois Year's Best anthology. Thanks to Gardner and to John Klima, who published it in Electric Velocipede (which is now open to submissions).

Alas about Baen's Universe, another market that is closing.

It's that time of year for the Strange Horizons Fund Drive! Please consider donating. Strange Horizons has been publishing great fiction, non-fiction and more since 2009 2000. Their authors get paid; the staff is all volunteer.

Strange Horizons published my story Diana Comet earlier this year. It's about a derring-do adventuress who's got a secret under her petticoats. We talk a lot about gender diversity in our genre, and here's a chance to support it: Tiptree awards, Spectrum Awards.

Last week, Heather Massey highlighted my trilogy on her blog The Galaxy Express: Adventures in Science Fiction Romance. Over the last few years, she's done a great job exploring and promoting works that bring together the best of two worlds. Thank you, Heather - not only for the support you've given me, but that you give to many authors, and to our subgenre.

Heather explains part of her philosophy here:

"...before rise of the Internet and DVDs, I feared that I would never recapture the stories of my youth, especially the ones involving grand space opera, romance, and larger than life characters. For years, 100% doubt reigned in my mind that these stories would be gone forever. I also worried that no one would invent similar ones—apart from fanfiction, that is."

I hear you, Heather! A lot of what I see today - grim, cynical, dystopian - doesn't work around my house. Real life can be grim enough. Kristine Kathryn Rusch wrote what I think is a defining essay about this in Asimov's a few years back: Barbarian Confessions, and it's a manifesto I wholeheartedly embrace.

As part of the week's blogging, Laurie Green, creator of The Spacefreighter's Lounge blog (another fabulous resource), wrote up a very nice bit on the trilogy:

"Peer pressure, division rivalry, protocol, chain of command, leadership hierarchy, seniority privilege, military discipline, professional pigeon-holing, the taboo against fraternization, and the extreme prejudice against ridiculously scuffed boots--it’s all there. I could almost smell the bootblack and brass polish."

Tia Nevitt, , who runs her own amazing blog called Fantasy Debut, also posted an entry:

"The interesting thing about this series is in the first book, you'll think of it as solid science fiction with some fantastical elements. And in the second book (THE STARS DOWN UNDER), those fantastical elements jump to the foreground. And the third book (THE STARS BLUE YONDER) is a time-traveling romp that is just too fun. But the point is, by the end of the series, it is equal parts science fiction and fantasy."

Thank you again, ladies, for your kind support, and for hooking up great readers with great books :-)

Today is the release day for my book 3, The Stars Blue Yonder. Happy Birthday, book 3!

Also, today is Ernest Hemingway's birthday. He would have been 110.

Very sad about the death of Frank McCourt. Last month I listened to his audio book "Teacher Man," and such a fine, funny, assured voice he had. He was born in Brooklyn near where I stayed during my trip. (Classon Ave.)

Literary tourism accomplished in NYC: Passed the Algonquin Hotel, visited Twain's House, visited Norman Mailer's house, visited Whitman's street, visited Arthur Miller and Truman Capote homes, saw lovely old manuscripts in the Morgan Library, hung out in the Strand. And museums visited: the Met, the Brooklyn Museum, the Morgan Library, the Transit Museum and the Botanic Garden, which is like a museum of plants and trees.

Speaking of trees, a tree fell over in my yard while I was gone: a young tree wedged between my fence and the neighbor's fence, and I haven't tried to climb up, peer over and find out why yet. It's still green and I'm in no hurry to cut it up. Let the leaves live as long as they can. Everything wants to live.

Here is the house where Truman Capote wrote "In True Blood" "In Cold Blood"



It's right down the street from the house Cher and her family lived in (well, the exterior is) for "Moonstruck," and right up the street from where Arthur Miller lived. I totally want to live in this neighborhood, with it's charming streets and trees and views of Manhattan. The Moonstruck house sold for $4 million a short time back; all I need is a new book deal and I'm there, baby.

Yesterday was all about Brooklyn Heights, the Fulton St landing (where George Washington & troops retreated), and the Brooklyn Bridge. I had vague plans of walking over the bridge, or at least on it, but I settled for under it, instead, because it was blisteringly hot. Also saw the Brooklyn War Memorial and Borough Hall before ending up at the Transit Museum, which didn't impress me with the lack of a/c, but totally won me over with the old trains parked on the lower level. It's a museum in a subway station, and I'm very glad I went. Afterward went shopping, went to the movies at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and then came home to three fire engines in the street; no fire, but very impressive.

Today: so sad! So very sad! I have to leave! I have to go on a plane and leave. I will miss N-N, the house kitty, who is sitting here under the glass coffee table looking adorable. I have left her plenty of food and water, and hope she doesn't get too lonely before her mommy comes home.

Things seen yesterday:

- The Morgan Library on Madison Ave. Loved the Twain photographs, the architecture, the history.

- A cat on a leash with her owner, sitting on the outskirts of Union Square. The cat looked fine, but I was kind of freaked out for it.

- The facade of an old stone church standing by itself. The church itself, long gone.

- A middle-aged man with a suitcase, sitting and crying, in the East Village

- The glorious pell-mell of the (very hot) Strand bookstore. Seen it before, always impressive. Only bought 2 books.

Got tabby333 to Penn Station. Was supposed to meet J's friend D for drinks, but that didn't happen. Also, not only is the Empire State Building following me, but it's warped the fabric of Manhattan space-time and is now everywhere I look.

Today: Transit museum. Prospect Park. Brooklyn Bridge. Meanwhile, here's Gandhi in Union Square. He's obviously as tired of walking as I am!

Day 4 of NYC was not about walking. Though there was walking. Mostly Day 4 was about the Brooklyn Art Museum, which is an oasis of calm and (relative) quiet (except for the jackhammer) compared to the Met, and which has very excellent brownies. We saw headless mannequins doing odd things (the Yinka Shonibare exhibit) and feminist dinner plates (the Judy Chicago exhibit) and much good art, and I especially liked the Asian wing.

Then, next door, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, which was lush and lovely and restorative - the Japanese Tea House, the bonsai greenhouse, Shakespeare's Garden, etc. These people should come take care of my yard. Afterward we went a little astray finding the subway again, but all was good at the end, and then dinner at the Thai place, and a trip to the bookstore. The $6 book I should have bought on Monday was already gone, and then I spent 40 minutes on Google trying to remember the title: Why I Have Not Written Any of My Books by Marcel Benabou. That'll teach me (again) to buy books when I see them. Then we watched Burn Notice, which didn't do much for me, and Supernatural, which of course does.



Today: maybe show tabby333 the marvels of Grand Central, thinking about the Pierpont Morgan Library, Tibet House, and the Strand bookstore. Books!

Greenwich Village, walking. Barnes & Noble, where I found two of my book 2 - yay for B & N! Mark Twain's House. A big library. A cafe. Walking. A fence hung with tiles about 9/11. A fire station. Walking, walking. Penn Station. Hot subways. Walking. Hot subways. Walking to KGB, too early. Walking. NYU, Washington Square Park, Mark Twain's house, this time the right one, since the one I went to earlier was the wrong one. Walking. Back to KGB. Walking up stairs. Hot, crowded, standing room only, walking. Nice grocery next to KGB with veggie options, walking, subway, walking, died.

Also, the Empire State Building is following me.

This is an old courthouse that is now a library, where they did not alas have my books, but nice stained glass windows inside.



Today: walking!!

Exhausted! In a good way. First NYC subway train on my own - fine. Second - diverted! So though I knew what to do on the B train, I had no idea what to do on a B that was now a Q. Ended up in Chinatown. Seven hundred trains later, including one that was a hundred degrees at least, found Penn Station and my friend S. Cabbed it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, my second lifetime visit. Huge, beautiful, four thousand interior miles of corridors, $20 to get in, $13 for a sandwich, drink and chips for lunch. Afterward we walked through Central Park past the little boat pond and zoo all the way down to Times Square and then Penn Station again (3 miles). Beautiful weather, too much secondhand cigarette smoke, but the park was grand.

Tons of iPods on the subways. The Orthodox Jewish man beside me was on his smartphone. I like trains in general, but am suddenly grateful for the wide open roads and ample parking of Northeast Florida. Meanwhile,
N is off to her workshop. The apartment kitty, N-N, was happy to see me last night but did not deign to sleep with me.

Today: Mark Twain's house. Pick up tabby333 at Penn Station. Wandering and discovering.

Here is the pond in Central Park filled with little sailing boats. I am most impressed that they find tiny little people to sail them:

I am in NYC, and N's apartment is lovely (books! books! books!), and the weather is very nice - much cooler than Jax. After various delays on a direct flight, landed in Jet Blue's sparkling terminal at JFK. N found me. Off we went on one train, another train, another train, and then a walk, and later another walk, and a bookstore (!), and much talking, and Thai food delivered for dinner (don't have that in Jax), and some TV and googling of various NYC attractions, and directions. This train to that train to the next train. Off she goes today and so I will be on my own, baby! Me and the kitty, who is quite friendly.

Here is a view from N's balcony. Hello, Brooklyn!



Today: A walk around Greenwich Village, a trip to Penn Station to meet S from NJ, and then a day of wandering.

True story! My friend J called me one night last week while she was out shopping. She was very excited. "I found your book!" she said. Then, a muffled conversation in the background. Chagrined, she came back on the line. "My boyfriend says I shouldn't tell you that, because we're in a thrift store. Are you mad I found your book in a thrift store?"

No, I reassured her. Thrift stores are fine. Remainder tables are fine. Yard sales, flea markets, the shelves of B & N - if you can find me there, I'm happy. Because the alternative is not being found at all. Besides, I buy a lot of things at thrift stores - just yesterday I bought Annie Lamott, plus a brand new red dress with a Dress Barn label, and nice sandals.

I wasn't quite brave enough to ask her which book she found - or if it happened to be inscribed :-)

But speaking of books, I was all tied up in my Arizona trip that I sort of failed to note that the paperback for book 2, The Stars Down Under, came out at the end of June. I finally got my copies and yay! Very pretty. The hardcover of book 3, The Stars Blue Yonder, comes out in about two weeks. I haven't seen it yet but the cover is lovely and I'm very excited.

Got my WorldCon schedule, but I've already canceled on that to go to Dragon Con instead, which is just up the road (well, 6 hours up the highway). And where I might see Joe Flanigan and Jason Mamoa from Stargate. Much more affordable - and giddy fangirlish - than Canada, alas.

Next week I will be heading north and landing for a bit in beautiful New York City, baby! Apartment sitting in Brooklyn. This will be my, er, 4th or 5th visit to the city, but usually I only get to stay the day. This is almost a week!

I've been to the Statue of Liberty, the Met, the World Trade Center site, the Empire State Building, parts of Central Park, Times Square, Rockefeller Center, South Street Seaport, Grand Central, the Waldorf-Astoria.

Thinking of going to: the Met (how can I not), the Cloisters (always wanted to), my first ever KGB reading, and some other places. Will try for the second time to get to the Tenement Museum, which was closed the last time I dropped by.

Any suggestions from lj land? If you had a week in NYC, where would you go?

Every now and then someone will say, "The short fiction market is thriving!" and I scratch my head. Here's a partial list of markets I've been published in during the last 5 years -

Fictitious Force - now closed
Talebones - now closed except as an annual anthology
Lone Star Stores - now closed
Best New Romantic Fantasy anthologies - long closed
Electric Velocipede - closed to submissions
Space and Time - closed to submissions
The Town Drunk - closed to submissions
Realms of Fantasy - closed to submissions
Fantasy - closed to submissions until Sept
Chizine - closed to submissions until Sept

and there are markets that I've never been in that are also closed/on hiatus: Apex, Polyphony, the big fat Best of Fantasy and Horror, etc.

For short fiction genre writers, this is all bad news.

There are still markets out there, of course; big ones like Strange Horizons, Asimov's, Analog and F & SF (been in two of those; working now on a story whose first stop will be Analog); smaller but good ones like Ideomancer, Abyss and Apex, Interzone, etc; baby ones that pay a dollar, no money, "exposure;" and non-genre magazines that take genre upon occasion.

Still, bad news all around.

(Updated: Notice I did not say any variation of "short fiction is ded! ded! ded!" I noted that there are a lot of markets closed to writers right now. Markets closed to writers = bad thing for writers.)

Been up since 4:30 a.m. thanks to the senile cat; going back to bed now!