This afternoon, I sat down and counted all that was posted my FB  stream until I reached the bottom of the page (in writer’s circles, this can be either considered research or procrastination. I’ll let you decide).

Overall, I counted 154 posts. 54 of those were actual status updates that was personal (though one was a paste and copy meme). The rest broke down to:

63 links to articles, blogs, rants.

6 personal uploaded photos.

31 pictures, which consisted of cartoons, political statements, Venn graphs, memes, pithy sayings, people holding up handwritten notes, and…in one case that got me into this rant thing in the first place, a social media meme that someone printed out and taped to the wall. I mean…really? Why would you go from this?

To this?

AND THIS HAS BEEN RESHARED 8 TIMES ON MY WALL ALREADY. WHAT. THE. HELL?

Now, before you say, idiot, if you got a problem go get on Twitter. Or Google Plus–no one’s over there. I like Facebook. I like the sharing of ideas. I like meeting new people and being exposed to new music or shows, or getting inspired or cheered. I like the whole idea of personally connecting with someone across miles or even continents. But lately, I’ve been feeling overloaded. Too much information, but no substance.

Enter the Month of Letters.

This is the brainchild of Mary Robinette Kowal, an awesome writer and puppeteer who will be the Guest of Honor at Mo*Con this year. She’s proposing that February be a month where people will dial down and go back to the very first social media: writing letters. The idea is simple:

1. In the month of February, mail at least one item through the post every day it runs.  Write a postcard, a letter, send a picture, or a cutting from a newspaper, or a fabric swatch.
2. Write back to everyone who writes to you. This can count as one of your mailed items.

Recently, I’ve started a new short story in a wirebound notebook . I’ve forgotten how nice it is to be able to whip out a pen anywhere, anytime and scratch down a few sentences. A few months back, I was going through some of my old letters from high school and college, and I was amazed at how heartfelt those letters were. Pen and ink can be seductive, comforting, and fun. I can’t believe I’ve forgotten that.

So, I’m going to do it. I’m going to write a letter each day in February. I got several people already I want to write to, but if you also want a letter from me, either send me a message on Facebook or Google Plus, or DM me on Twitter (yes, I know the irony of using social media for this). You can even leave a comment on my blog and we’ll get in touch. And if you are already participating in A Month of Letters and want my address, let me know!

This is going to be fun. Now I’ll have to dig out all that stationary I’ve been saving for no particular reason, and figure out what kind of stamps to buy. Fruit? Black History Month? The Garden of Loooooove?

Very interesting to read. Two “elders”, man and woman, tell the history of African Americans from slavery to modern times in graphic novel form. I liked how the elders sometimes bickered with each other as they told the story, and thus illustrating that there are differing opinions on what happened in history. It was also interesting to see that there is no clear-cut absolutes. Wealthy white slaveowners were depicted as greedy pigs, but some were also portrayed sympathetically. Black people were shot at, brutalized, but they’re also shown as disagreeing among themselves as to what to do.

The book also showed that black people had a strong presence in politics, even during slavery times. I liked how that the book didn’t just focus on slavery, but on the conferences (blacks held a Republican conference at one point. That was delightfully ironic), as well as the writers and scientists.

The only thing that turned me off was the drawing style. It felt a little crude to me. But the history telling was so rich, I soon overlooked it.

This is something I would love to have as part of my library. Four freedom trains out of five.

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Writing wise, I had a huge publishing blitz at the beginning of the year, including a nonfiction article up at Fantasy Magazine and a reprint of Future Perfect podcasted up at Escape Pod. I also had the first ever honor of one of my short stories landing on the storySouth Million Writers Most Notable stories list of 2010.

After April, things went pretty quiet until I was chosen to attend the fifteenth class of Viable Paradise in October, the biggest highlight of the year. To raise funds for that, I wrote 12 short stories and poetry put them into a ebook collection called the Into the Mist-Stained Woods: A Calendar of Tales (more on that will be in a later post). But other than that, since the workshop, I’ve been writing and editing my novel, and that will be the biggest focus for 2012. But that doesn’t mean putting short stories on the back burner. Viable Paradise did teach me was to churn out stories quicker and trust that they’re good enough without spending months of work on them. It’s just the matter of sending them out.

I went to three cons in 2011: Oddcon, Mo*Con, and Wiscon. This year will most likely be the same, but I’m also looking into going to Chicon 7, seeing that it’s in Chicago and all. I hope to make it my first Worldcon attendence.

I also hope to do more blogging this year. Feels like most of my blogs are either about my own work or book reviews. I would like to change that. What would you, my dear reader, like to see more of?

I’m really late on this.

When I first started seeing the movie posters, I thought, oh great, another civil rights era showing blacks in menial jobs. When I heard its main character was white, I already knew the plot: white girl sees black maids, white girl uses her resources to single-handedly help them, there’ll be some mayhem, and in the end, the white girl walks off feeling good. See, it’s a feel-good movie. Just like the Blind Side.

But then an interesting thing happened. In my facebook stream, I started to see two polarizing opinions. The first was from mostly feminists who said pretty much what I wrote above–which included this statement from the Association of Black Women Historians. The other side was praise from Christians, mostly women, who saw the movie as uplifting and inspiring. What’s more, it was coming from black Christian women. That didn’t happen with the Blind Side.

I put the book in my to-read pile. I still had reservations about seeing the movie. My co-workers invited me to see with them, but I felt somewhat funny being the only black person in the group. My black writer friends were scattered over the country, but they ragged on the movie. So I figured I’d have to wait until it came out on Netflix, until Christmas, when my aunt pulled out the movie on blu-ray and asked, "Hey, look what I got." My grandma looked at it and said, "Well, nothing else is on. Put it in."

So I watched the Help with the womanfolk of my family (all the men, of course, vanished, because hey, chick flick). That really enhanced the movie, because, as I hoped, they did not keep quiet during the movie. My mom, my aunts, and especially my grandma, had a whole lot to say during the movie. And that helped enhance it as a whole.

My grandmother wasn’t a maid, but she did clean people’s houses during that era before she was able to become a nurse. She verified the rules that the black maids had to remember in how they interacted with white people. She also shared some interesting insights that the movie glossed over–for instance when Abilene gets kicked off the bus because a black guy got killed, and she goes home to learn that Medgar Evars was killed.  Grandma told us that not many people know about him, but he was instrumental in getting the civil rights movement off the ground. "You don’t hear much about him," she said, "but he did a lot of good work–him and Martin Luther King, Jr. Folks got angry when he got killed."

She also said that the black women loving the white children they raised was pretty much spot on. "Children are innocent. They don’t know any better." Afterwards Grandma and I talked black and white relations in general after the movie. "Wasn’t no big deal," she said. "You had the whole gamut of black folk who didn’t care a thing about the people they worked for, and then there were others who were treated like part of the family. You need to understand, down in the south, it was pretty much expected that way. Blacks and white lived side by side, kids played with each other–it was the norm. But it was also expected that the blacks got all the menial jobs, that they couldn’t rise up higher than their level. As long as they knew their place, they were fine."

Then she said:

In the south, you can live next to them; you just can’t be better than them.
In the north, you can be better than them; you just can’t live next to them.

She then told me about her aunt who lived in Arkansas (and taught my grandma to love books–which she passed down to me) who had a farm right across from a white couple. They were friendly to each other. Every so often, the white couple would send for my great aunt to come over and do something like kill a chicken, because that was what black folk did. And my great aunt did it because that was the norm. Didn’t matter what her mood was like, or if she did it out of charity or bitterness. It didn’t matter. No one questioned it, because it never entered into their heads to do so.

That wasn’t too long ago, either.

My grandma and mom and aunts loved the movie (which is interesting because my mom is the only professing Christian in the lot). As for me, I liked it, but probably not for the same reasons.

The beginning starts off just the way I figured it would–with Skeeter as the main character and the story being centered around her. We’re also introduced to Abilene, who could be considered the secondary main character. Minnie is definitely an antagonist of sorts, though it could have been the other white woman, but Minnie stands out far more to me.

As the movie went on, a very interesting thing happened. Although Skeeter was more the protagonist, there were less and less scenes of her and more of Abilene and Minnie. In fact, many of the strongest scenes had either Abilene or Minnie or both in them, but no Skeeter. (Case in point–the movie sets up this whole dating thing with Skeeter and that dude–can’t remember his name. But that gets gets glossed over with Minnie’s storyline with the pie (which my family found a hoot). You don’t even know Skeeter was dating him until he breaks up with her after the book comes out. You could cut that entire storyline out and it would’ve made no impact to the plot.)

That ending when Abilene enters the church to a standing ovation, and she gets the book with everyone names in it–dang if that didn’t make me tear up. And what does Skeeter get? Umm…an opportunity to go to New York, which she plans to turn down, but hey, the long-suffering maids urge her to go, because it’s not like nothing is keeping her there (and moreover, it’s not like her life will be in danger if she stays, not like the maids…sorry. I so hated that scene.) Luckily, Skeeter is written out goes to New York, and we get to the true ending, where Abilene confronts her employer.  It was as if the movie itself knew that the actual strength of the story came from the black characters, but it made Skeeter the main character because…well…it’s the norm.

It could have been bold. Make Abilene the main protagonist and ditch all the weak, stereotypical, "let’s show how white southern women go around acting like high faluting members of "Mama’s Family",  and put the focus on Abilene, Minnie, and Skeeter in that order, and this would’ve been such a powerful film, right up there with The Color Purple. But it didn’t. It went with the safe white protagonist. And that just made the movie good. Not great…but light and good. Shame.

As for all the naysayers about it, well, I can certainly see why you don’t want to see it. And that’s a shame as well, because this wasn’t a story about a white privileged female who wanted to become a journalist, so she writes a story about black maids. This was a story about a black woman who wanted to become a writer, so she uses a white journalist to get her story out to the country. You can see it as a privileged person taking advantage of her status to get ahead in life, or you can see it as black women taking a risk to empower themselves.

I asked my mom what she thought about the movie. "In those days, it was all about people taking risks, even though they knew it could kill them. It was those risks that got the civil rights movement rolling."

This gets the rating of 3 chocolate pies out of 5. I would rate it more, but I don’t know…after this movie, I’m going to look at chocolate pies with more suspicion than normal.

As you drink your eggnog and wrap your presents, you may say, "I want to give an ebook as a gift. What ebook should I give?"

You’re in luck, because I’m dropping the price of my short story and poetry collection Into the Mist-Stained Woods: A Calendar of Tales to only 99 cents!

Think of it as my Christmas present to you…except, well, you’re buying it from me, so really, it’s actually a present to me…meh, don’t think about it so hard. BUY IT!

I do plan for this to be the last month the story calendar to be up. After that, I will take it down. So this is your last chance. Buy one for yourself, buy one for your friend. And then pass the word around. Twitter, Facebook, Stumblr, you name it.

And then, enjoy!

I brought this book with me to Viable Paradise and found myself reading it at the weirdest of times (2am, between lecture breaks). It was riveting enough that I couldn’t put it down, but I can’t say I honestly liked the book.

Mainly, I struggled with the misogynist language. I can handle swear words fine, but never could stomach characters calling women c— and p—-. Hate that with a passion. I couldn’t sympathize at all with the narrator until he revealed himself halfway through the story and gave some insights into his own past (another thing I struggled with: I thought for the longest time the narrator was Oscar’s sister. The two voices are too similar for me–I had to read carefully to figure out who was talking).

Also, I had a hard time trusting all the scifi references. Being a geek myself, I got most of them, but for the first part of the book, it felt as if the author was trying really hard to show how much a geek Oscar was by throwing in all these LotR and Akira references, which felt too…general. Thanks to the movies, everyone knows LotR, and not as many people know Akira, it is the first anime movie that broke the market here in the US. It felt to me that the scifi references was more name-dropping than actually pertaining to the story…until I reached the passage where the narrator describes a cafe kitchen worker as a grotesquerie straight out of Gormenghast. When I read that, I was like, ahhhh, so he does know his fantasy books. And from that point on, I started trusting the book.

Which is good because the story itself is heartbreaking. If you ever want to learn how to write passive characters, this is a good one to read, because Oscar is passive…and what’s more, he chooses to be passive. the scene where the roommate (and thus the narrator) tries to get Oscar to work out and he gives up, actually fights to give up, is powerful. His lonely life is balanced by the stories of the people around him, which are heartbreaking in their own right. But Oscar’s was what pulled me in; I remember those days of loneliness and reading thick fantasy novels and crushing hard on guys who never returned the favor. So most of what Oscar did in the book didn’t surprise me, at least not until the end, but even then, now that I think about it, his ending was inevitable.

So the story itself is why I’m giving it three stars. Too bad Oscar didn’t hang. A couple more years and there would have been the Internet. But knowing him, he probably would’ve become those bleak, all night WoW players who don’t interact with people except through avatars. So maybe it is a triumph he went out the way he did? ::shrug::

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I was surprised that none of the “Frankenstein” mythology was really present. Frankenstein doesn’t create the monster in a laboratory by lightening. It’s more implied. In fact, I would venture to say Frankenstein was a dick. He creates this monster but doesn’t take responsibility for his actions–even after the monster endeavors to learn life on his own.

The most heinous thing Frankenstein did though was keep silent while Justine was sentenced to death for killing his brother. He was more concerned about his status than her life. I lost what little remaining respect for him. The monster had more respectability than him.

Interesting that it was a story within a story within a story. The best story was the one about the British family who helped the Arabian woman and the son and her became lovers. I wanted to see the ending to that! Of course, the monster ruined it by revealing himself. Bummer.

So, mostly this story was about Frankenstein creating a monster and then whining about for the rest of the story. Meh. Good thing it was a quick read.

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The main reason I went to Viable Paradise was to get help for my work-in-process, The Weeping of the Willows. I had reached a point where I was in revision hell, and I needed clear eyes to get myself out of it.

What I learned there was that 1) everyone goes through this, 2) I got a good complex story, and 3) I need to CUT THINGS DOWN. Right now, I have so much happening and so many characters, trying to juggle it all wore me down.

I’ve looked over my outline and cut out some stuff. Some storylines can wait until the next book. I’ve combined some characters into the main characters, making the latter stronger. And ::deep breath:: I’m starting all over again.

So you see the Willow in progress counter to the right? It’s back to zero.

That was probably the most painful part of this whole process.

But…in theory…this revision would go faster. I no longer have 60 chapters to wade through. It’s been streamlined to 45 chapters. We’ll see how this works.

Last night, I edited the first page. Only a kazillion more to go. It’s a start.

1) I wrote it once, I wrote it again, by golly, let’s do it one more time: it doesn’t matter how smart you are–all that matters is to tell a good story.

2) And in that vein: in terms of the adage “Write What You Know” you know a lot more than you think. I came to Viable Paradise thinking, “Everyone is smarter, or been to more places, or done more things, than I have.” That’s not true. Every single one of us has a different set of know-how, memories, and skills to draw back on. And if you don’t…

3) The rest can be faked–with a little help from your friends. The internets is your friend. Libraries are your friend. Your friends are your friend. (Wait…your friends…uh, never mind.) You have a wealth of knowledge surrounding you. Don’t be afraid to use your status as a writer to get outside help on something you don’t know. People love it when you say, “Hey, I’m a writer and I can use your help.” Ply them with attention and maybe a croissant and they’ll help flesh out your world.

4) If you put in a lot of stuff in your story to flesh it out because you don’t think you know enough, stop it. There’s a difference between details and “a telling detail”. The latter gives you the necessary info a reader needs to know, the former is just filler. Which means:

5)Tighten, tighten, tighten your prose. Oh, my gosh. Stephen King was right. The hardest part of writing isn’t the first draft. It’s the second, when you got to figure out what stays in and what is dragging down the story. And then there’s the third draft: making sure your words work for you (killing -ly words, strengthening verbs, etc). I think this was probably the most important tip I learned at VP.

6) Even swear words have their own grammar.  Really. It’s true.

7) Become a slushreader. One of the advantages I had at VP was that I slush for Fantasy Magazine and Lightspeed, so I already knew what made a good story. But going to VP also helped me become a better slushreader because I can see why most stories don’t work. I can also see what would make them become better stories. So keep an eye on the nets, and if you see a magazine calling for readers, take it.

8.) Get in a good writer’s group, or at least have beta readers. And don’t get readers who would just say “this is good” or “this is bad”. Find readers who will be brutal. You’ll need brutal. But also find readers who can dig the good parts too. Balance is always key. You don’t need to physically meet. Google Plus is awesome place to hook up with writers. Heck, doing the Hangouts alone is worth it.

9) Don’t just write. Also read. Read everything. And watch movies. And go out and hang with friends. And do things. And Live.

10) You can cook greens by simply drizzling them with olive oil and salt, covering them with tin foil, and letting them bake in a low oven for about an hour or so. So this isn’t exactly a writing tip. I don’t care. Those greens Mac made were AWESOME!

Well, dang.

I need to respond to that. And what better way to respond than to DROP THE PRICE OF MY STORY CALENDAR TO $2.99!

That’s right folks. You can get my short story/poetry collection “Into the Mist-Stained Woods: a Calendar of Tales” for the low, low price of $2.99. That’s the price of a decent app. A good cup of coffee. Portabella mushrooms on sale at your local grocery store. A danish. (Huh. This is what happens when you write a blog post before breakfast.) But it’s a good deal. And if you can’t buy, then spread the word. Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, you name it.

So click on the link above or the Paypal button in the right hand column. And enjoy!