Back from the jungle

Literally. We spent two weeks in Costa Rica for spring vacation, and discovered an amazing little country. When time permits I will put up a ton of photos on Picasa with comments (which doubles as my travel journal).

We had a great tour organized by Wildland; while Lidia and I are confirmed and avid backpackers we decided that with two kids in tow, no time to plan, and an enormous number of national parks we would just sit back and let the experts do it.

The experts responded with canyoning, nature hikes, white water rafting, river exploration, scuba, a night hike to study bugs, mountain biking on a volcano... great stuff. What is funny, though, is that one of the most memorable experiences happened off-itinerary.

It was our last day, and we had wandered into San Jose to see a museum and to actually see what the people are like, because until then pretty much all the locals that we had seen were covered with fur and lived in trees. We knew the wildlife better than the Ticos (with the exception of our excellent guide, Charlie).

On the way back to our hotel, and thence the airport, we wanted to stop and buy a soccer shirt of the national star, Centeno, for Louis.
Note: When traveling in third world countries, having a cute kid who wears t-shirts of famous soccer stars is just an awesome ice-breaker.

So our taxi driver drives us to the stadium where Centeno's team, C.D. Saprissa, trains, and asks around to see if we can buy a t-shirt. Suddenly they are swinging open the big metal doors, and we are driving in. The driver parks under these enormous cement bleachers, gets out, and starts talking. One of the team stars comes over and shakes our hands, then starts chattering at everybody. Within a few minutes he has a t-shirt for Louis, has signed it, and is corralling all the other members of the team to do the same thing. Somebody gets called over from the snack counter to sign it. The guys who are driving out of the stadium after practice get stopped, they sign the shirt, and so on.

Pretty soon Louis is standing there with a foolish look on his face, holding a shirt that has been signed by a dozen players from the best football club in all of Central America (they won the CONCACAF Champions' Cup in '93, '95, and '05).

And all because we happened across the right taxi driver. Pure travel serendipity.

Grammar sniping

A short note on the 'ending a sentence with a preposition = evil' rule. It seems to be accepted that this is not a grammatically meaningful rule, and here are two further destructions of it:

1. Ben Jonson: "Prepositions sometimes follow the noun they are coupled with."
2. Phrasal verbs are verbs that take the form of phrases -- to put up with, to look out for, etc.  So when you write "When hunting werewolves, large bloody pawprints and half-eaten carcasses are signs to look out for" you are actually ending a sentence with a verb, not a preposition.

Louis in the snow

This is what Louis is up to this week. I guess it was kind of inevitable; there is only so much time you can spend on the slopes as a young boy without wanting to try a snowboard.

 
Here it is: the proof that GM was behind the Obama campaign.
How pathetic is that, using the "Yes We Can" slogan to advertise SUV's?

Belated Merry Christmas to us

We finally cashed in a gift certificate from the in-laws: a spa treatment and lunch at the Mas Candille in Mougins.
The morning started with half an hour in the exercise room, followed by two sessions in the sauna, some time relaxing in the heated pool, and a 45-minute massage. From there we were off to a three-course lunch that included a glass of champagne and a half-bottle of wine.

That explains why last Tuesday was a vacation day...

 

Sunrise in Le Bar sur Loup. We get up early to send Zoé off to school, and this is what greets us from the living room windows.

Confetti for the kids

Louis' school (or Louis's school, depending on your grammatical preferences) had its Carnival today. He went dressed as Calvin & Hobbes with a stuffed tiger (dote factor pegs the redline). This is what the street looked like afterwards.

Porcine maquillage redux

I made a post to the mailing list of the Game Writers' SIG last month about a lipstick-on-a-pig project that I am involved with.

Basically, due to errors of timing and personality and development, I will be the third writer on this particular game which has been in development for two years. I will be the last one, however, and though I would love to call this a testament to my talents it is in reality because the beta has to be finished in the next few weeks...

Though I should say this sotto voce, and not admit in public that it is really the case, I actually think that this particular story will work out quite well in spite of the apparent last minute rush. There are several reasons for this rare exception to The Freelance Game Writer's Rule*:

1. Because two writers have trod this lonely road before me, the developers have been working with a few well-defined main characters in mind (though some of the secondary characters will have to change). Therefore, the protagonists and antagonists are not afterthoughts to the level creation.
2. Because the level design is 95% complete, I know that what I write is not going to undergo numerous changes and require numerous re-writes. In other words the story will not be a mutant; something disfigured and contorted to adhere to the shape of the final level design.
3. I am sitting two or three days a week with the developers in the studio, with access to everyone from the level designers to the creative director.
4. I have won the acceptance of the Creative Director, who has grudgingly admitted that though my baby is not gorgeous, he has seen many others that are far uglier.
5. The gameplay just absolutely rocks, and I look forward to playing the final product. This helps in those times of temporary lapses of motivation.
   

To quote Charlotte: "Some pig."



* The Rule: Involve the game writer early, involve the game writer often.

More nice comments

A few other reviews of my Interzone story have come through. I liked the IROSF one in particular.

http://www.irosf.com/q/zine/article/10502#interzone

http://scififantasyfiction.suite101.com/article.cfm/interzone_219_from_tta_press

Griping about the AIAS awards

 
1. If you want to cast even one vote you have to cast all your possible votes. This means that you are forced to vote in a category, even if you don't believe that any of the nominations deserve the label "outstanding."  And even if you are not actually technically competent to judge.
2. There seem to be, as far as I can see, a total of 0 indie games on the ballot.
3. Many games that I would have liked to see nominated were not present.

I feel like I have been co-opted as an unwilling participant in some groupthink project.

Interview on the Narrative Design Exploratorium

I was interviewed by Stephen Dinehart for his Narrative Design Exploratorium. Stephen is a narrative / story designer, experienced with and fascinated by the integration of narrative into video games. His interview with me is the fourth in his series "Game Writers in the Trenches."

While I make no claim to genius or insight, the series that Stephen is running - "Masters of Narrative Design" and "Game Writers in the Trenches" - have a lot of great content for people doing game writing.

Please take a look and comment on my foolishness and/or wisdom.
http://www.narrativedesign.org/2009/01/game-writers-in-the-trenches-4.html

P.S. And enjoy the photo. It's my "uncompromising artistic tough guy" shot. With stubble.

A moment of silence...

 
The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror, a staple of the speculative fiction world, will not be published this year. The series ends with last year's volume, the 21st. This is a loss to readers and writers alike, as evidenced by the comment thread on the LCRW site.

I've been BoingBoinged!

 
Which is about as cool as it gets. The Tumbarumba anthology was posted on this very famous blog site by Cory Doctorow, SF author and uber-geek. The submission came from Ethan Ham, who collaborated on Tumbarumba with Ben Rosenbaum.

Excuse me, I must go lie down and wait for my heartbeat to return to normal.

Another kindly review

 
SFRevu has nice things to say about my story "Everything That Matters," which has the fortune to be in an issue with some superb writing by Jason Sanford, Gord Sellar, and my fellow Villa Diodatian Aliette de Bodard. I don't mind being overshadowed by writers like that...

Vacation snaps

1. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow... er, rain.
   The first full day of our Christmas vacation we discovered that our ski suits were no longer waterproof. It is a strange sensation to be soaked, pretty much to the skin, and not be cold. Hooray for modern technology. One can of waterproofing agent later things were much better.
   
2. The Joy of Sechts
   ...couldn't resist that one. Secht is the Austrian version of champagne, and the best ones do have a level of dryness and finesse that is similar to the original. However there is a lot of plonk out there as well, and they are often too sweet. If forced to recommend or purchase it, Henkell is generally a safe bet.
   In addition to the bubbly Austrians also make a wide range of schnapps (however, the Joy of Schnapps is nowhere near as interesting a title). Plum, pear, and apricot are probably the most common, but there are a lot of more exotic and infinitely more interesting ones. Enzianschnapps made from gentian, vogelbeere schnapps made from rowan berry, and himbeere schnapps (raspberry) are my preferred after-dinner shots of choice.
3. Hooray for Austrian trains
   The long-distance trains have plugs for laptops in second class. Even the famed French TGV can't rival this.
4. Vienna for the holidays
   Highly recommended; it's a city that knows how to dress up and celebrate. The streets are decorated, there are Christmas markets all over town, and a zillion little stalls spring up that sell mulled wine, hot chocolate, and other specialties like gammsmilch (spiked milk) and jagertee (spiked black tea), etc. Further proof that for Europeans, alcohol > cold.
   

Hooray for nice reviews

 
http://www.sfcrowsnest.com/articles/books/2009/nz13475.php

A tip of the hat to Garth D Jones and his impeccable taste in speculative fiction (he liked my story). He liked Aliette's tale as well, calling it the best one in the issue.

Tumbarumba; a frolic of intrusions

I have another story that is Out There; it is being published in this on-line art and literature experience created by Ben Rosenbaum. My first paragraphs are on his blog entry.

What is also very cool is that the LA times has a brief article on it. Thanks, Ben!

So if by any chance you use Firefox, download the extension and wait and see as your browsing experience gets irregularly invaded by (brilliantly written) speculative fiction.

A nice--though brief--review

 
On the sciencefictionfantasy blog:

"Everything That Matters by Jeff Spock (illustrated by
Kenn Brown, who also did the cover): a traditional SF thriller about
hunting for alien treasure in the oceans of another planet, humans
adapted by surgery to breathe underwater, murderous 25 metre long
sharks, and revenge. Great stuff!"

So is it spam, or is it marketing?

 
"S'il vous pla?t, pardonne-nous de perturber votre précieux time.We sont [name removed] company.This Tai est une company.one électroniques des plus
grands grossistes du commerce international dans China."

There is a fine line...

Zoé grows up; Dad freaks out

Zoé's new haircut! It's kind of a watershed, actually. She's 11 1/2, and this is the first time she has really wanted a more grown-up, teen-looking haircut. I'm not ready for this...