Raise Your Hand If You’ve Ever Been Mistaken For Nalo (or Chip, or Octavia…)

By:  TempestConventions
Raise Your Hand If You've Ever Been Mistaken For Nalo (or Chip, or Octavia...)

I was just reading this excellent entry by Pam Noles. There’s a rather long sidetrack in there about being mistaken for Whoopi Goldberg often and in public and also being mistaken for Nalo Hopkinson at SF cons/events. There’s some verbiage in there about why the latter ends up being more annoying than the former.

Whenever I go to a con, I can usually count on at least one person mistaking me for some other black person, be they Nalo or just some black woman who is also at the con. Apparently at last year’s World Fantasy people kept confusing N K Jemisin with Alaya Dawn Johnson and Doselle Young with David Anthony Durham.

Yes, I am being serious.

I find this equal parts funny and annoying. Some days I just laugh, some days I’m like, “Really, people? REALLY?”

Anyway, I fall on the side of being slightly amused by this today, so I wrote a silly poll (ETA: poll taken down because the plugin is ass). Just how widespread is this phenomenon? How many people experience it, and where? Who do they think you are if they don’t think you’re you?

And also, when Nalo is around, who do they think she is?

Glad I’m Going To Be Offline Tomorrow

By:  TempestElsewhere on the Internets
Glad I'm Going To Be Offline Tomorrow

Cuz I just know my f-list is going to be:

Battlestar Galactica was so awesome!

Battlestar Galactica  SUCKED, WTF was that!?

Battlestar Galactica OMG AWESOME!

Battlestar Galactica AHHHHHHH

Battlestar Galactica

Battlestar Galactica OMG AWESOME!

Ron Moore is not safe from my sharpened spoon!

Battlestar Galactica

Battlestar MOTHERFUCKING Galactica

Taxes.

(In a related note, I have the crazy urge to start posting fake BG spoilers: They were ALL Cylons!  It was all the dream of an autistic 12 year old boy!  Lorne Michaels showed up at the end and killed everyone!

hahahaha)

On Being An Unemployment Statistic (Yes, I Am One)

By:  TempestNews

Some people already know this, some don’t: a couple of weeks ago I was laid off. This sucks not only because being out of work right now is definitely not a position I want to be in, but also because I loved my job and co-workers. It was all down to economics, sadly, and nothing to do with me personally. My boss was really upset to have to let me go.

Since then I’ve been doing all the normal stuff: haunting job boards, networking, letting folks know I’m available for full-time or freelance gigs. There’s even a very attractive resume to show off. Feel free to pass that along to others.

Though I am unhappy to be laid off, I am not panicking. I’m mostly calm about it, possibly because I’m deep-down confident in my ability to find another job or otherwise survive in this city, which I’ve been doing pretty successfully for three years (and five before that). Perhaps I’m just deluding myself. Still, this whole thing where I decide what my life is going to be and then it is that has worked for me since 2003, I see no reason for it to stop.

Good thing is that I have more time for writing! Also, jump-starting some projects lagging behind. And catching up with my poor, neglected interns at Fantasy.

You may be thinking: Oh no! What can I do?

Other than passing around my rez, as previously stated, not much except think happy thoughts for me. I greatly appreciate all happy thoughts. I am, luckily, not in dire financial straits. For once in my professional life, I’m eligible for unemployment, which should help keep me afloat as I look. I don’t intend to sit on my laurels, but this time around I don’t need to freak out.

I will still be at WisCon.

I know I am not alone in this. Beyond the statistics, my friends list and blog feeds are full of people reporting layoffs, firings, or other such news. The economy blows. Hopefully we’ll all have good fortune in the coming months.

What To Do With Smoked Salmon?

By:  TempestGeekitude

For the holidays, my homegirl Cat Rambo sent me some smoked salmon from the great Northwest. It’s been in my possession for quite a while because, I must confess, I’m not sure how best to utilize such a wonderful thing. I have the itch to cook a bigish meal this week and it would be good to include the salmon. Does anyone have any suggestions? Anything I should run out and buy to accompany it? I’m open to anything that isn’t too expensive.

One Room in NYC, Furnished With Hopes And Dreams

By:  TempestGeekitude

Due to some issues, my roommates have decided to move back to California. This is very sad because we all love each other and want to cling, but circumstances are tearing us apart! Boo.  Logistics also dictate that my roommates are leaving most of their furniture behind, so I have a large, furnished bedroom just sitting there taking up space and generally not paying rent all by itself.

The boys will be gone by the beginning of April or so, and thus I’m on a roommate hunt again. Before I invite the unwashed Craigslist masses in, I wondered if anyone out there is interested in coming to stay in NYC for a few weeks or a month or whatever. It’s certainly cheaper than a hotel ($30/day) and I will even make risotto for you.

Of course, I could also use some longer-term roommates, as I plan to stay in this apt. at least until the end of the year.

Reprint Markets

By:  TempestWriting

I am pretty knowledgable about SF/F markets for original work, but woefully ignorant of places that take reprints.  Obviously I know of the Escape Artist stable, but am less aware of other podcasts. (With the exception of Clonepod and Drabblecast. I had not-good experiences with both, and I’m reluctant to send them anything else.  Nothing truly horrendous, just enough that I personally am not going to send them anything else in the forseeable future.) Anyone care to give me a head sup on the reputable markets that take reprints so I can start bombarding them?

Life is Compliated, I’ll Talk About Tarot, Instead

By:  TempestWriting
Life is Compliated, I'll Talk About Tarot, Instead

There are about 7 million things I need to attend to, but due to various life stuff, I haven’t been able to.  And, of course, I’ve been quiet on the blog for two days.  Horrors!

So, let’s talk about something fun: Tarot.

I’ve been reading various things about tarot for months because I’m writing a kids book for CatsCurious Press based on tarot.  Yes, I know, this is the first time you’re hearing about this. I kept waiting and waiting to make the announcement and now I am just like: yes, book deal, moving on.  Sometimes I can be strange.

ANYWAY, tarot books. After coming across more than my fair share of really silly books about tarot I pinged my homie Barth Anderson, because he wrote a novel about tarot.  Tarot and a bunch of other crazy mythological shit, and you know how I love the mythological shit. The Magician and The Fool is a pretty awesome book and I’m going to talk about it in a sec.

Back to Barth.  I asked him if he could point me toward some non-stupid books.  We chatted a bit about tarot and crazy new-age books and sucklike.  He pointed me toward one book, and in looking for that book at the store I came across this one: The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination. This book is interesting, particularly the history bits. I’m going to use a few of the ideas in constructing my story, yay. Reading that book made me want to read The Magician and The Fool again, because I was trying to remember how much of the history stuff Barth mentioned there.  So, I did.

When I first read this book, I was totally hooked.  For people like me who are totally into mythology and ancient mysteries, this was some serious crackfic.  I liked it just as much the second time around, but had the same feeling that all the threads were not resolved to my satisfaction. Possibly because I want answers to ancient mysteries and care less about the character arcs being resolved. This is completely opposite from my normal reactions to fiction — this must be how hard SF readers feel about Spin.

After I finished The Magician and The Fool, I had a serious itch to pick up one of my many tarot decks. I went through a period where I scooped up a bunch of decks based on a variety of reasons. I only have two decks I ever regularly used, though: the Goddess deck and the William Blake deck, which is annoyingly obscure. I had to buy it from the dude who created it because it wasn’t available on Amazon at the time. I only use the Blake deck for artistic/creative work. I lost the book to the Goddess deck a while ago and felt kind of lost without it. But the desire to throw down was really strong, so I pulled the deck out and decided to see what happened if I just tried to interpret the cards themselves.

And now it’s as if I’ve always known what the cards mean even though I didn’t before. My brain is all inside-out!

I’ve done a few readings in the past couple of days and just as spot on as I used to be. (Yes, I used to be kind of good at reading.) This is very weird to me, and I can’t even explain why it is so weird. I’m not sure what’s going to happen when I crack the Blake deck again, because that one is even more mind-bending than “regular” tarots.

Okay, back to 7 million things.

RaceFail Amnesty Post

By:  TempestBlog Against Racism
RaceFail Amnesty Post

Maybe Amnesty isn’t even the right word, but I can’t think of anything better right at this moment.

The point of this post is: there have been a lot of people involved in RaceFail.  A LOT.  Some of them failed and failed hard, some of them wandered in cluelessly and then proceeded to fail, and some people came in with good intentions but ended up failing for some for a myriad of reasons.  I feel like several people who fit into that last group have probably been lumped in with the first and second.  Not because of the OMG ORC HORDE, but because, in a discussion of this nature where emotions run high and you just don’t know a lot of the people who wade in, it’s easy to peg someone as clueless or harmful when they’re not, or when they’re not trying to be, or when, in a less tension-filled situation, everyone may have been able to communicate better.

I see this happen a lot.  I assign no particular blame to any one group or person, because it’s not anyone’s fault. It is, sadly, natural, given the state of things.

But I think it’s important to speak up when one sees something like this happen. Not to chide others for not knowing a person as you do, but to at least be on record as saying: “I think this person is all right.  When we have distance and have made something good of this situation, please re-evaluate how you feel about them. I think they’re worth it.”

There’s more than one person I need to say this about as regards RaceFail, but right now I can only think of one: rozk.  I haven’t known rozk long, but from our private conversations and her posts, I believe she’s one of the good ones.  I don’t see the problems others have had with her (as in, I don’t interpret what she’s had to say the same way), but I also recognize that, because I have an existing friendship with her, I might not.  Still, as I said above, I hope people who consider her one of the “bad guys” will reconsider later on.

As I said, there are more people.  I will add them in the comments as I think of them.  But I’m inviting anyone who reads this to do so as well.  Name names!  But in service of saying, “This person is worth re-consideration.”

Rules:

  1. I prefer people use the names most folks know them by when commenting (obviously if people know you by your LJ handle or nickname and you wanna use that, I have no issue).  The whole point of this is you speaking up for people you know, but that’s hard to do when you’re being anonymous.
    • If you really, truly feel like you need to be anonymous to the world, then please put your name or identifying name in the email field (then add @anon.com).  No one sees that but me.  I may nor may not publish your comment, but it has a better chance if there’s some identifier attached.
  2. I’m going to be as agressive about trolls and bullshit as I can on this thread.
  3. If someone mentions a person you really don’t like, I ask that you, just here, refrain from getting into an argument about them. You may still feel the way you feel in a few months, you may feel differently.
  4. When you comment, speak from your heart.  Opinions are welcome.

ETA: I will not post anon comments from people whose IPs match known proxies. Be a troll elsewhere, cowards.

ETA 2: Will also not post comments from a certain branch of the LA public library that is near the office of a certain LA lawyer that I have banned from this blog. Do you not realize that WordPress auto-logs IPs?  Well, you do now.

I Am Shameless. At Least I Admit It!

By:  TempestWriting
I Am Shameless. At Least I Admit It!

The storySouth 2009 Million Writers Award for Fiction is now accepting nominations!

The purpose of the storySouth Million Writers Award is to honor and promote the best fiction published in online literary journals and magazines during 2008. …this year there will be three cash prizes: $500 for the overall winner, $200 for the runner-up, and $100 for the honorable mention/third place.

I am going to nominate some stories (yes, I’ll tell you which when I know), but I am shameless and want people to nominate my 2008 story, Until Forgiveness Comes, as well.  Here’s the link to do so IF you desire.  Obviously, I shall not force you. ;)