Sunday, February 3rd, 2002 - Apple Juice instead of Wine
While I was sick, there were certain moments when I could balance between the pain and nausea and function, more or less, in the real world. One of those moments was Wednesday night, when I went to see McCoy Tyner at Yoshi's with David (part of my birthday gift; I had to take a raincheck on the sushi, though, as I didn't think it wise to try and eat while I was so sick). The show was good, I'm sure, though we were stuck on high chairs in the back, and I was uncomfortable during most of it. That was too bad. The weird thing was that the next table over held Jenny and Krista, whom I used to work with when I was at Xinet. Good to see them. My birthday party was Saturday night, and I was determined to have it, despite feeling woozy most of the time. At least the party was at my house; if there'd been another party somewhere else that night, I'm sure I would've had to skip it. The party was probably the most successful party I've had. I invited a bunch of cool sci-fi writer types, close friends and combinations of the two. By the time I'd greeted most of the guests, I turned around and realized there was a circle of writers and editors in my dining room, talking shop and dropping names (or purposely *not* dropping them, in some cases) and just generally being outgoing as all hell. I wasn't in much of a shape to hold court anyway, so I was grateful to this bunch of very interesting people to provide the witty conversation while I sank into a chair and soaked it all in. I realized that some people are really, really funny (Avi and Sean, I'm looking at you). Holly and Sam get the "hippest dress" awards., while Jen and Mark should get medals for "most patient significant others". Kimio surprised me by being really interested in all the sci-fi talk. Teddy gave invaluable advice on how to get rid of ants (instant grits; they'll bring it back to the nest and feed it to the queen and it'll expand and kill them all; hee!). Susan was lovely, as usual, even if it was weird for me to see her get tipsy and not be tipsy myself (which is usually the case). In fact the only bummer of the evening is that I got probably half a dozen bottles of wine for my birthday party, and I was stuck drinking apple juice. Ah, well. I had a great time, regardless The next day I was woken up early by the clanking of dishes in the kitchen. I stumbled out to find that Holly, my sweet sister-housemate, had cleaned up the mess from the party! Yes, I'd missed out on some sleep, but hell if I'm gonna complain! I'm gonna love living with Holly, methinks. We went to Mama's Royal Cafe to celebrate Holly's first weekend living with us, then Tim and I came home and promptly fell asleep. We awoke in just enough time to get dressed and make it out to Au Coquelet to meet Mary Anne and a bunch of writers who'd gathered with Nick Mamatas after his reading at Dark Carnival. Mary Anne gave me a lovely pot of lillies of the valley (which are blooming now and smell heavenly; thank you MA!) and proceeded to "give" me the end of the table with Nick to "preside over". I'm not sure I did a royal job or anything, but I did have a lovely time talking to Nick and Joi Brozek (another writer who was also out from NYC). As usual when I meet authors in person, I find myself more interested in reading Nick's work now than I was before I met him. We stumbled over to a Thai restaurant (well, I stumbled, being still sick and woozy and probably wearing myself out) and had a lovely meal. I actually managed to sit near other vegetarians (Zed and Joy), so we got to sample more than just one dish; always fun at such restaurants. More shop talk, though this time Jed made a comment about my own writing, which doesn't happen very often (mainly because I've yet to publish any speculative fiction, sigh). He'd recently read "Goat Girl" when I'd submitted it to Strange Horizons and he took a moment to tell me he had really enjoyed the story. Very cool. However, it seems that one of the other editors, who had otherwise liked the story, did have a problem with the underage sex in the story (sigh); Jed echoed my own concern that it's going to be hard to find this story a home because of said underage sex. Damn, damn, damn. It's my best speculative story to date, but it has a handicap because of this. I was amused later to read Greg's entry on authors complaining that they get rejected because their story is too "out there". I agree with him that this is usually not the case, but I had just come from a dinner where I heard it from the editor's mouth, more or less. Of course, I don't think my story breaks any new ground (hardly any story really does these days; Tim's forever telling me "it's *all* been done before"), but it does touch upon the taboo of underage sex, which is well-known to make editors skittish. No, I can't make the character older; the story wouldn't work, I swear.	Exercise log: Sitting is exercise when you're this ill. Writing log: Got a rejection from Glimmer Train; sent the story out again to Zoetrope. Current Publications: "How to Suck" reprinted in From Porn to Poetry: Clean Sheets Celebrates the Erotic Mind I'm currently reading: Smoking Poppy by Graham Joyce Northern Gothic by Nick Mamatas Books on Tape (usually while exercising): Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates by Tom Robbins.
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