Keffy

everything i do is so fucking amazing that sparks are going to shoot out of your eyes

Month: May 2012

I’m not afraid of heights

I’m not afraid of heights.

Not really.

But.

Sometimes I get nervous when I’m standing next to cliffs, or on the roofs of buildings, or near windows, or on tall rocks, or after I’ve climbed onto the shoulders of a very tall person.

Not because I think I’m going to fall (except if it’s a very fidgety tall person), but because some part of me, some little itsy-bitsy, very unscientific, very not-so-good at self-preservation part of me still doesn’t quite believe that I can’t fly.

And that itsy-bitsy, very unscientific, very not-so-good at self-preservation part of me remembers being a kid and climbing up onto my dresser, and imagining really hard what it would feel like to go flying down the hall and out the door and past the dog and over the fish ponds and the creek and EVEN over the hill and the race car track. Maybe even to Australia.

And that itsy-bitsy, very unscientific, very not-so-good at self-preservation part of me suspects, even though this is obviously not true, that the biggest reason I never actually managed to completely destroy the rules of physics was that I always put pillows on the floor for my inevitable fall. So of course I landed on them.

But I’m not really afraid of heights. I’m afraid of my lack of fear of heights and that that temptation to launch myself out into space will eventually just be too strong, but then on the other hand WHEN I’M DIVE-BOMBING PIGEONS I’LL BE THE ONE LAUGHING, ASSHOLES.

I think if you pretend that this is an extended metaphor for art or something, I sound less alarmingly unhinged.

My Wiscon 36 Schedule

This is my schedule for the upcoming Wiscon 36, taking place in TA-FREAKING-DA Madison, Wisconsin, May 25-28.

My programming doesn’t start until Saturday because my plane doesn’t get in until 5pm on Friday. Why am I missing almost the entire first day of Wiscon? I’m going to go see THE WALL again with my father the night before (Thursday). Yes, I have seen it before. Yes, I’m going to see it again. YOU CAN’T STOP ME.

Schedule:

Intersectionalism: It’s Not the Oppression Olympics  Sat, 4:00–5:15 pm
Ian K. Hagemann (moderator), Keffy R. M. Kehrli, Beth Plutchak, Julia Rios,  and Vanessa Vega
Many of us experience discrimination and oppression of many kinds, often concurrently. Blah blah solidarity blah blah. (Instead of introducing myself, I might instead engage in a well-meaning but probably stupid critique of the term “Oppression Olympics,” much to the excitement of all.)

Intersectionality in the Writing Workshop Environment Sat, 9:00–10:15 pm
Vylar Kaftan (moderator), Keffy R. M. Kehrli, and Ibi Zoboi
Intensive writing workshops can be incredible life-changing experiences. But what’s it like to attend them as a writer of color, a woman, a trans person, a queer person? Etc. (This is one of those where I was like OH HEY, I WAS GAY AT A WORKSHOP when I did the initial sign-ups, and now I’m like, oh, crap, can I talk about that for a whole hour?)

Outer Alliance: New Writings in LGBTQ SF/F/H   Sat, 10:30–11:45 pm
Julie Andrews, Therese Arkenberg, Keffy R. M. Kehrli, Catherine Lundoff, and Julia Rios
Readings from recent work featuring LGBTQ protagonists and themes. Outer Alliance is an organization created to combat homophobia in SF/F and to be awesome.(YOU’RE COMING TO OUR READING RIGHT? RIGHT?)

“But it’s not for girls!” Sun, 10:00–11:15 am
Caroline Pruett (moderator), Keffy R. M. Kehrli, Pat Murphy, Katherine Olson/Kayjayoh, and Jessica Plummer
Legitimate complaints about sexism in comics, video games, and other geeky media are often dismissed with the argument that they aren’t “for” women and girls—and since women don’t buy comic books and/or video games as much as men, they have no right to complain. (My presence on this panel should help to further confuse various con attendees as to what, exactly, my gender is or isn’t. I admit that I’m mostly showing up to mock the trend of needing to protect the sacred ballsacks of men everywhere by prefixing all words with MAN when it’s a dude using the item in question. It’s not a den, it’s a MANcave. Etc.)

Beyond Binary: Genderqueer & Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction Book-Party  Sun, 8:45 pm–Mon, 3:00 am
Keyan Bowes, Brit Mandelo, Keffy R. M. Kehrli, Ellen Kushner, and Delia Sherman.
This release party for the anthology Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction will include readings by contributors, plus tea and cookies. (It’s a party! PARTY.)

The SignOut (scheduled) Mon, 11:30 am–12:45 pm Capitol/Wisconsin
Includes a whole ton of other people, many of whom actually have published novels or collections, unlike me!

ALL OTHER TIMES: Shenanigans.

Belated Con report?

Wow, wow, wow. So it’s taken me so long to write about the stuff I did in March/early April that the first question is probably just — why even bother at this point? (Eh.)

In March I went to Rainforest Writers Village (Session 2) and Fogcon 2. Fogcon was unfortunately followed a week later by Norwescon 35. I learned my lesson as I dragged through Norwescon and subsequently spent the rest of April being an anti-social little troll. Or something. Never do cons two weekends in a row unless I can take the week in between off. (Yes, I’m a wimp.)

Fogcon was a fun convention, though the hotel construction was a bit of a bummer. However, the bartenders made my favorite kind of screwdriver — the sort that is only very faintly yellow-orange and makes your face go numb. I forgive hotel bar prices if the drink is 90% vodka.

I’m not sure how I feel about the panel lengths at Fogcon. I’m apparently rather used to conventions in which the panels are 45-50 minutes so even super interesting panels longer than that feel like they’re dragging a bit. Although, the Body Image 201 panel was a nice exception. It’s always good to end panels feeling like there’s more to say.

I’m sadly unsure of whether or not I’ll make it back to Fogcon, unfortunately. It’s just at a terrible time of year for me — there’s a six week run in late winter / early spring that covers 6-7 other events I’d like to possibly attend (many of which are local), as well as my birthday. I think I’ve spent my birthday at home twice in the past 15 years, and one of those was spent frantically vomiting up words for a cheap freelance assignment.

Norwescon also went well. I was pretty busy, especially on Friday. In addition to programming through the weekend, I gave four critiques as a pro for the Fairwood workshop.

It’s still weird to me to critique as a pro even though I also did so in 2011. While I technically meet the loose definition of what passes for professional in SF writing (SFWA member, sold some stories, burned through my Campbell eligibility), I don’t feel particularly advanced compared to the people I meet on the other side of the table.

The panels I was on went well enough, including the two I was most concerned about: Transphobia 101 — which is a gigantic topic, and LGBTQ speculative fiction — which I read and write of course, but I often don’t remember to keep a running tally of which books had which queer characters.

And, as last year, I was completely spoiled for my reading. Full room again, despite the fact that I was reading at 9:30pm and it was an unpublished story that really isn’t very genre-like at all, except if you look at the title and then squint extremely hard at the rest of it. And nobody walked out when I said it wasn’t going to be spec fic! Woo!

Despite being reasonably well received, I subjected the story to another round of revisions to cut out 600 more words. So now I’m fucking around, wondering if I want to mail it out or Get More Readers Who Know Stuff About Outside Of SF/F. Procrastination. Gotta love it.

Coming up, I’m going to Wiscon, the Locus Awards, and PAX. I might be at Foolscap or Orycon, BUT… for various reasons, I have to stop spending money on cons.

And, I love cons. Love, love, love, them. But… I have to finish this novel. And some short stories. As it is right now, I like being at cons, but I’ve been feeling more and more like a faker over the past two years of this productivity slump. Ugh. I even hate typing that.

If only I could get paid for Twitter. >_>

Website redesign, WordPress, etc.

So.

Pretty much I’ve just gone and joined the WordPress club, mostly because I was tired of my main website being a pain in the ass to update and I like this whole “post scheduling” thing. Also, because I’m too cheap/broke to pay someone to design one for me. Have a webmaster? What, do you think I’m someone important or something?

Assuming everything works correctly, people will be able to read my posts on either Keffy.com or my livejournal and comment both places.

Basically, very little has changed. In fact, this post is primarily so that I can test settings.

o___o

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