Keffy

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

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My WORLDCON (Lonestarcon 3) Schedule

August 21, 2013 / / 0 Comments

This year I will be on Worldcon programming for the first time. I have one panel and a reading. I’m admittedly a bit concerned about the reading, just because, well, it’s early. Clearly this means that I’ll just have to party extra hard on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, so that I pass out earlier than usual on Sunday night and wake up early.

… yes that is exactly what will happen, Keffy.

Note to self: you might want to actually make sure you have somewhere to stay on Sunday night, or things could get sort of… interesting.

THE GOOD NEWS about Texas is that the heat means it’ll take less booze to get buzzed than usual. Yaaaay. THE BAD NEWS is oh my god it’s over 100 degrees there I will die, oh em eff. gee. (Though on a serious note, I’m already assessing whether or not I’ll be more comfortable binding and passing, or not binding and not passing at all and feeling super awkward as people who’ve only ever seen me at cons suddenly go BUT I THOUGHT YOU WERE A DUDE and I have to be like “yeeeeeeaaah, well, I am, but…”)

My Dragon Torched the Prince and other Plot Problems
Friday 19:00 – 20:00
How to survive after discovering you’ve painted (written) yourself into a corner….
Stina Leicht (M), Keffy Kehrli, Mary Robinette Kowal, Thomas Olde Heuvelt, Moshe Feder.

Writers Workshop L
Saturday 14:00 – 16:30

I am critiquing some people! With another person! All these people are anonymous and mysterious! (To you.) I’m only putting this here so that if for some reason you are looking for me at 2pm on Saturday, you will know that I AM UNAVAILABLE. I will be busy pretending to know how to improve fiction.

Reading: Keffy Kehrli
Monday 10:00 – 10:30
Keffy Kehrli

That’s right! I am reading at my own reading! DO NOT BE ALARMED.

Other than this, if there is a bar, I will find it. Unless it is a beer-only bar, in which case screw that noise. I will hopefully hit parties gleefully, and find wonderful people to hang out with. If you’re going to be at Worldcon, say hi! Or something. A good way to get in touch with me during the convention is via twitter — I might not see stuff that’s on my stream, but I will see at-replies and PMs.

I’m really hoping to make it to the Drinks with Authors party:

Because, hey! I like drinks. And authors. Hopefully that bar is really close to the con.

I’m also hoping to go to the Helsinki Worldcon bid party, though I don’t know when/where it is yet. I have ALREADY put in my vote for them to get it in 2015, and I really hope they do. Even if they don’t, however, I think I’m going to try to get to Finland in 2015 anyway, because I miss it. (That’ll be aaaalmost ten years since I moved there to study for an academic year, and I miss it.) Maybe a Finncon or something?

I will ALSO also probably be showing up at the SFWA stuff when I’m able, occasionally. I’ve decided to renew my membership for another year, assuming I have any money left over after this Worldcon trip. (Ahahaa… ha…)

That said, I’m… really not sure why Lonestarcon has decided it’s appropriate to screen Song of the South. I mean, really? Really?

STALE BEANS and Blogging Like I Tweet and also Sidewalks

August 14, 2013 / / 0 Comments

This morning, after making sure that the blog post telling everyone to go throw money at a magazine with my story in it was actually scheduled, and that the Twitter plug in was ACTUALLY working, I had a dilemma.

With only 90 minutes before needing to leave for work, is that enough time to make coffee? Will I just end up sipping half a cup while distracted by the internet, and then have to dump the rest of the searing hot pot of coffee down the sink? WILL I WASTE MY PRECIOUS BEANS (note: said beans were ground for me a million years ago and are probably so stale that the purveyors of said beans, who actually have standards, would probably be horrified that I still have them and intend to drink fluids I’ve strained through them).

DO I HAVE TIME to drink enough coffee to make using MY PRECIOUS BEANS worthwhile, I thought, staring at the dirty, doddering, ancient Mr. Coffee perched on the peeling 60’s olive green countertop. DO I?

I immediately went to the bathroom, found the only mirror still extant in the apartment, stared deeply into my eyes and wild hair for a moment, and then tentatively slapped myself. I was still confused so I turned a light slap into a brutal THEWACK. And then, I knew. OBVIOUSLY I HAD TIME FOR COFFEE. Sheesh.

Similarly, I’ve been spending way too much time screwing around and thinking, “Boy, I really ought to blog more often, both my website and my LiveJournal are like these horrific ghost towns full of nothing but begging for cash for my stuff and begging for cash for other people’s stuff.” Because I used to blog a lot, back when LJ was pretty much my only social network, because Facebook sucked then, and Myspace also sucked and the others hadn’t been yanked kicking and screaming into the tubes.

The problem is that I keep telling myself that I should blog about something TRULY INTERESTING and be like those people who craft amazing essays on the nature of publishing or whatever and blog them. Except that then I’m like WELL IF I’M GONNA SPEND ALL DAY ON IT I SHOULD TRY TO GET PAID, and then I think about trying to find buyers for Essays In Which Keffy Has Opinions About Shit, and feel tired, and decide to say screw it! and go back to tweeting incessantly.

BUT THEN, at some point between turning on Mr. Coffee to make this glorious stale coffee (anything is okay with enough chocolate syrup, that’s what I always say), and now, I realized… WAIT.

What if I blogged like I tweet.

Neurotically, in great volume, about pretty much nothing.

BRILLIANT.

Also, here is a picture of a sidewalk. I have a lot of them. They bring me joy. I cannot explain this. SIDEWALKS! YOU WALK ON THEM!

“Mice” is now out in Fireside Issue 4!

August 14, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Not a lot to say today, but my flash piece, “Mice” is out in Fireside issue 4 today.

Here’s the link: http://firesidefictioncompany.com/issue4/

It’s $2 to buy just issue 4, and $24 for the whole year. It also looks like there’s a giveaway for people who buy a year’s subscription in the first week.

In other news, I found out that “This is a Ghost Story” will be in the November issue of Apex, so that’s coming up in a few months.

AND I’ll be at Worldcon at the end of this month, so hopefully I’ll see some of you there!

STUFF that is GOING ON.

July 25, 2013 / / 0 Comments

It always occurs to me after the fact that I could put things on my blog (which, unlike Twitter, has object permanence. ha. ha.)

About 2 weeks ago I got an acceptance from Lightspeed for “HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!!” which is about what it sounds like. It should be out in October.

When I went to add it to the forthcoming section on this site, I realized that I have exactly as many professional rate acceptances slated to come out this year as I have ever had previously. Welp.

The other stuff coming out this year:
“Mice” should be in Fireside Year 2 (Issue 1, which I think is slated for August now.)
“Gazing into the Carnauba Wax Eyes of the Future” – later this year, in the Kickstarted What Fates Impose anthology.
“This is a Ghost Story” – Apex, also later this year… maybe November? December? It’s not officially set, though, so I’m pulling months out of my ass, here. : )

Oh, if you’ve been wondering how it’s going, the Waterloo Productions film of “The Ghost of a Girl Who Never Lived” is still in production, though it’s been pushed back so that they have time to finish the Jay Lake documentaries. (Which is super important, so I’m glad that they’re getting those done.)

I’ve also been planning it for a while, but I’m finally starting to seriously eyeball my drafting table and cast longing glances over my dusty-ass art supplies, so we’ll see if I can get my shit together enough to do something with those. I’ll probably come up with some sort of half-comic half-prose monstrosity that nobody will publish. Yay! \ô\ ~ /ô/ ~ \ô/ ~ \ô\ ~ \ô/ (That’s me, dancing. See the hat?)

This weekend, I’ll be in Portland for Cascade Writers, where I’ll be on some panels and talking about stuff like whether or not short story editors care about your cover letter and if there are enough stories with queer characters in them. (No, and THERE CAN NEVER BE ENOUGH.)

The 2013 Clarion UCSD Write-a-Thon Post

June 19, 2013 / / 1 Comment

So, it’s that time of year again and this year’s crop of Clarion UCSD/West/whatever students are getting ready to go forth to San Diego, or come here to Seattle and Clarion for six weeks. I, however, having done Clarion already, will mostly be sitting at home trying to write.

I’m not doing anything particularly special this year, although I’ll probably be tweeting incessantly about both the write-a-thon and the What Fates Impose Kickstarter, because I’m nothing if not a loud, obnoxious hypocrite (yay).

In any case:

a) Clarion UCSD is running a Write-a-Thon again this year
b) I’m doing the Write-a-Thon: Here is my page! You can sponsor (which means just sending Clarion money and making me feel warm and fuzzy inside), or you can pledge. Pledging puts more pressure on me to actually write some shit this summer.
c) You can do it too: (They’re trying to reach 225 participants by June 23!)

My goal for the 6 weeks is 50,000 words. The goal is listed in sort of a clumsy fashion, because I wanted people to be able to pledge per unit, but once you get to 50,000 units the pledging amounts get ridiculous, and it’s something like 0.0001 dollars per word. So you can pledge per 500 word unit. Or something. I don’t know, whatever, there are 100 of them.

That’s pretty much it for now.

My “What Fates Impose” Story Is Full Of Vomit

June 17, 2013 / / 1 Comment

BWOMP BWOMP IRONY ALARM BWOMP

Ok.

A while back, I announced that I’d sold a short story to Nayad Monroe for an anthology project. I wrote a story inspired by an event back in Bellingham that involved, erm, a lot of marshmallow peeps. If you’re from Bellingham, you may remember this event. If not… well, I totally never did anything that sounds anything like any part of the story in the anthology, ever.

Shifty Eyes Gif

Anyway! The anthology as a whole looks pretty cool. It’s called “What Fates Impose” and is full of stories about predicting the future, since that always goes well. There are stories by Ken Scholes, Cat Rambo, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, some assorted Inkpunks, and a bunch of others. Also, I’m sorry everybody, but Beth Wodzinski wins the trophy for best story title with, “One Tiny Misstep (In Bed).” CONGRATULATIONS, BETH. YOU GET A PRIZE. THE PRIZE IS… okay there isn’t really a prize for that. Sorry.

Right now, there’s a Kickstarter running for the book, where you can pre-order the ebook, print book, or get some other neat backer rewards. Because I’m super creative and original, I’ve got a few fiction critiques on offer as higher tier backer rewards.

Here’s the link.

On top of everything listed in the actual Kickstarter page, Nayad is currently running an additional giveaway for people who back the project before June 21: Details, details, details.

The project should be pretty cool and you should totally back it if you haven’t already. And I’m not even just saying that because I want to get paid.

Probably.

The Ghost of a Girl Who Never Lived has a cast!

April 25, 2013 / / 0 Comments

A while back, I sold film rights to Waterloo Productions for one of my short stories.

It was pretty exciting to see this morning that they’ve posted a cast announcement! Hooray! I don’t know very much about all the stuff that goes on around films getting made, so it’s cool to see the occasional updates when something happens regarding the project.

A reading (tomorrow) and other stuff

April 23, 2013 / / 0 Comments

First up, the subject line of the post. Aaand, yes, I realize that this is at the last minute, but you can see where “BLOG SOME STUFF” fits on my current to-do lists… not very high.

Tomorrow, Apr. 24 at 7pm, I am participating in a reading at Soul Food Books in Redmond (the address is under the Contact Us tab on the website). I’ll be reading with Cat Rambo, Brenda Cooper, K.C. Ball, Jennifer Brozek, and Caren Gussoff.

Also coming up at the end of July is the Cascade Writers workshop, which I’ve mentioned here before. It’s a good workshop, with a bunch of cool speakers. It’s filling up but not yet full. There is also still time to apply for the scholarships which will cover your registration fee.

Other than that, I have to run off and study for/take a cell biology exam. Eep. Cell membranes are full of so much barely comprehensible STUFF.

10 Years ago…

March 20, 2013 / / 0 Comments

In Bellingham, 300 to 500 peace activists made their way onto Interstate 5, temporarily blocking freeway traffic for two miles in either direction.

Barely even a footnote, now.

War is apparently our only priority in this country.

I should probably have more to say. The thing is, I don’t really see what good saying it would do.

Kickstarterrrrred out

March 5, 2013 / / 6 Comments

I’m kinda KickStartered out right now.

Before anyone gets all upset that it’s somehow their Kickstarter, specifically, that I’m being pissy about, it’s not. It’s the cumulative effect of my feed being all Kickstarter all the time, every day. I used to feel relieved on the days when various fundraising efforts finally finished because I was looking forward to the constant “fund! FUND! fund! FUND!!!HEY @WHOEVER RETWEET US FUNDFUNDFundfundfund” to end. I don’t really get that relief though, because there’s always a new one starting up for something else.

And they’re successful, so whatever, people like them.

And some of them are interesting projects that nobody (including the presses behind them, I guess) has the funds to just do without the kickstart.

And I’ve funded several of them, based on how much I’ve got sitting around, and whether or not I really want the anthology/whatever.

And I’ve submitted to… one? Maybe two, after the fact, because I happened to have a story that I thought fit. (I was wrong! But such is life. 🙂 )

BUT.

Right now, KS is feeding the same exhaustion that I feel when magazines have desperate fund drives, or the publishers of anthology series vent that they get more submissions than sales. This exhausts me because the result seems to be: find ways to convince authors to fund your press/whatever.

Lately I hear people lauding Kickstarter as the salvation of short fiction, or whatever. I guess? But it feels like a better way to convince writers to pay for magazines/anthologies/projects in hopes that they’ll be able to submit to them than anything else.

I guess I just feel like the atmosphere around short fiction is basically, “Nobody cares but you, so fund it!”

No, this isn’t some grand pronouncement of RAEG!!1 No, I don’t expect anyone to stop. I’m just overly sensitive to sales pressure of this type so it’s getting to me.

My kingdom for a week without Kickstarter.

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