I'd like to buy a Clue, Pat.

One half of the best editor husband and wife teams out there, Jeff VanderMeer, gives his 10 Clues for the Clueless on how not to behave while submitting. On the flip side he gives his 10 Editor Responsibilities. Good reading. And just for the record, Jeff gives good rejections (I'm still looking for a home for Robert's Thunder, Mr. VanderMeer, I will let you know where I place it). He certainly walks the walk.

Because if I don't say it, it'll drive me buggy

To the Blackwater employee who drew his side arm on his college to get him to stop randomly shooting into the crowd, bravo, good soldier. However, when someone goes gun-happy in a firefight that forces you to train your own weapon on them to get them to stop, they get one chance to return to sanity. Do not continue to try and hault them, just stop them from firing their weapon before they can shift focus of fire on your position. Just a thought.

Just Keep Swimming...

Spent today putting together the prefab filing cabinet and arranging files and books on the shelves.

The instructions on the filing cabinet said it should take and hour. My ass. Two and a half hours later and it's together. The instructions were bogus. Here, put all the hardware in the panels first, and then start assembling. Oh, I'm sorry we're using wooden dowels for connections (as well as cam pins). Yeah, I'm going to glue (oh yeah, the glue included sucked, so I used my own) dowel pins and then move on to something else while the dowels swell. Yeah, great plan. So I did it my way, using my own glue, adding hardware where I though it was necessary, and assembling on my own schedule. I also attached a power strip to the back to power the printer on top and the airport I attached to the side.

Then I moved the old filing cabinet into the closet and moved around the files. I'm in the middle of organizing the old shelf we kept with office stuff, moving some of the papers off the new built-in-shelves, and rearranging things to fit. Lots of back stretching and other stress fun. Now I need to do much work to clear off the bed so I have someplace to sleep tonight.

If it's not one thing, it's an otter.

Rumor has it that during the latest blow up with Blackwater firing on Iraqi civilians (the one that caused the PM of Iraq to withdraw their license to operate) that one Blackwater employee trained his weapon on another and ordered him to stop firing.

There's still no coherant story about what happened in Northern Syria last week. All the parties concerned seem real intent to say that something happened involving the Israel Air Force and Commandos, links to a N. Korean freighter, approval by the US Government, happened in the far north, but that's about it. Nobody, so far, is willing to say exactly what.

I'm enjoying Goblin Quest immensly, but Jim Hines goes in that category of authors I like but that leave me uncreative. That is as I read them I don't have story bones come to me. Jim, don't worry. John Scalzi, Tobias Buckell, and a number of other authors I love to read have the same effect on me.

Not all together happy with out shelves (yes, I need to post a picture). I need to cut some moulding (which the contractor should have), and two holes for adjustable shelves have ripped. There's still boxes all over the place and we're not able to park in the garage. This will be this weekend's work. Bought a new filing cabinet on sale. It's molded wood, but I needed something bigger and didn't want to change up metal with wood. I probably should have, though. We'll see once I get it all together.

A Dark Wind Blows

Funk. I'm in a definate funk. Margle.

Frustration mixed with powerlessness mixed with things going wrong mixed with tiredness. Not a good cocktail.

I get this way sometimes. It'll pass, I know. I just need to keep from being a dick until that happens. Lots of misunderstandings and differences of perspective (such as I'm usually thinking three steps out than most people I work with, and I get even more frustrated when they can't break out of dealing with the mess right in front and correct the environment that caused the mess in the first place) can happen. Patience is my watch word.

There's also this nervous energy behind it all. Which doesn't help.

Mostly I feel tired, which is worrisome. Tiredness is one of the major way depression manifests in men. I was depressed long enough at my former job to know the feeling (my last boss was literally driving me insane). I can recognize now that there was a slow burn to get here. The sugar head-ache (like a hair-band across the top of my head) I've been nursing for a week and a half is now joined by a frontal lobed head-ache (another sign). I haven't done any writing lately. My schedule is overbooked until World Fantasy in November.

And I'm thinking about presidential and national politics, which never helps.

I know this will pass. Hopefully I can kick it this weekend. I don't like this feeling and being this way. It doesn't help with anything at all.

There has been some discussion about what topics people blog about lately. I thought I really shouldn't share this until I remembered hearing a radio show talking about depression in men and how men display depression differently (strangely enough medical practices and methodologies are based on men and how men display and react, psychological practices are based on women). While I listened to this show, as I was at my former job, I ticked off the list they presented while saying,
"Yep, got that." Depression is natural, a part of being alive. Being depressed for years (like in my last job) isn't. Fortuantely I have a new job and that has helped greatly.

Let's Call It a Day and See if It Goes Away

Well, that was a day. The day job had a lot of crappy situations which I won't explain to much. Let's just say that my cup runneth over with noncomunnications.

The iPod battery ran down. The job from heck made it to the fourth circle of Hades this week. Smirkiness was at an all time high. And I didn't get out any of the three post I wrote in my head (yes, they are all gone now). By the end of the day I had that silliness feeling like you've just got off the tilt-a-whirl.

And to top it off, the yawning chasm of doom that is TV has yawned even farther.

DEAL!

The UAW and GM came to an agreement. Now it just remains to be seen if the rank and file accept it.

Given that a main stumbling point, and a matter of competativeness, was the health care issue, mostly for retirees, can we have another national discussion of comprehensive, universal (and hopefully single payer) health care? One that doesn't have people screaming on both sides. Because here are the facts, our US Health Care System, as currently working (ie. private insurer and payer model) is now a major drain on the economy and is a disadvantage in our global competativeness. It is time for that terrible thought, single payer health care. If you have more money and can pay for extra stuff, go ahead. For the vast majority of people we need to have "socialized" medicine. And, yeah, most countries get it right. It's only when conservatives for those countries to shift to a private payer system (like they did in England and are trying in Canada) that it goes awry.

For those that cry, "It'll mean rationing!" Just WTF do you think is going on right now? Only the rationing is done by economics, the poor get little, the wealthy get all they can stand. In the future, the poor will get more, and the wealthy can afford to get the extra service that the "socialized" part won't pay for.

"It'll mean long waits." You are clueless. Try and get an appointment with a new doctor and let them know you have Medicare coverage. Six month wait here we come!

"It'll raise taxes!" Probably no more than what you're paying into your current health care plan. Most of us are paying for our health care. Not much of a change.

"It'll mean a large government bureaucracy!" It'll mean less than the jobs that are in private industry, economies of scale you know.

"It'll mean inefficiencies!" Medicare, 'nough said.

"Doctors will stop practicing!" Have you been paying attention to what's been going on with malpractice insurance?

"New wonder drugs won't be produced?" Okay, let's end the government's sponsorship and tax breaks. After all, it should be completely private, right? Yeah, companies and goverments will continue to research new treatments and drugs. And when was the last wonder drug introduced? I'm not talking lifestyle drugs, I'm talking about something with the impact of penicillin, something that changes medicine at a fundemental level, a paradigm shifter.

Really, there aren't many reasons not to do a wholesale reform of the health system. The current situation is an example of private markets gone bad.

Dungeon Crawl

I'm reading Jim Hines' Goblin Quest and having a good time. I met Jim at Confusion last year after hearing about his books. So when I was looking for something to round out an Amazon Order to get free shipping, I went to my wish list and pulled out his book. Through a coincidence of when I was out of reading, packed for installation of the bookshelves and shipping, Jim's book was vaulted to the top of my reading list.

The cover was what did if for me. one of the few things my brother introduced me to that I enjoyed was Dungeons and Dragons (well, AD&D by the time I got to it). With one quest I was (somehow) playing a goblin thief character I played to the hilt and enjoyed greatly. He even ended up talking a dragon out of some treasure ("As I am but a meek goblin, that wouldn't even be an appetizer for you, oh great wyrm"). Not an easy thing to do, but if Bilbo could get away with it, so could my goblin. When I saw the DAW Cover of Goblin Quest I instantly remembered that whole quest and giggled as I looked at it (which is how it ended up on my Amazon Wish List).

I've only read a few dungeon crawl books before (the Dragon Lance series, hey, I was 16) and the most recent, R.A. Salvator's One Thousand Orcs (or something like that) really turned me off to them. I mean, eveyrbody now has to play their wizard like Fizz (wiggle whatshisname) from Dragon Lance; slightly dotty, powerful, and distant from reality and consequences (when in fact, that character wasn't any of the previous). In Orcs I could hear the dice tumbling and see the DM flipping pages through their notebook and the characters referencing their Player's Manuals. And the main character really never seemed to be in any real danger (as we would say, he's monty hauling it).

So Jim's book is welcome. I'm only about a fourth of the way through and I'm enjoying it greatly (thanks, Jim). Sure, it's based on your typical dungeon crawl adventure, and some characters (at least so far) are stock players, but he does it really well. the characters have motivations beyond the "wack monsters for loot" kind.

Has anybody else been reading dungeon crawls, and do they do more than give you the feeling of dice rolling and rule checking? I've thought about writing some as some point (in fact, I discovered a notebook from many ages ago with notes for one, it was clear I didn't know WTF I was doing at the time, this was probably from when I was in my mid-twenties, maybe late teens). My experience, except from Jim's book, hasn't been one of positive goal setting material, so I was wondering if anybody has seen other examples.

War Stories off to the Dark Wisdom

Aftyer querying about the length, My Favorite War Stories is off to the Dark Wisdom. If they don't like it, I'll have to kill my darling at the begining, rewrite the intro, and then find somewhere else to send it to.

Yesterday I had a critique of my flash piece, Interview. That title will change. People for the most part were positive about it. I'm workiing on putting all the edits together, and then off to someplace that does flash (flashquake was proposed by Mer way back when).

Now with less me.

Had my 90-day doctor's appointment. This was to determine if I needed to go on a highly-restricted and monitored diet (monitored in case I would fall over). As you may know, Bob, I'm insulin resistant (metabolic syndrome). This is an early precursor to diabetes. I begged off the diet three months ago stating my schedule would make such a diet impossible, and that I was feeling different taking metaformin.

Well, today, in the afternoon no less, I weighed 9 pounds less than I did three months ago (1 pound every ten days). Woohoo! So no restricted monitored diet for me. Now I need to do it again around Xmas time.

Pop, it's bad for you. I didn't change much in my life except restrict the pop a little. Now I need to restrict it more, and maybe hike up and down the steps more at work.

STRIKE!

GM UAW workers went on strike. I expect it to be very short lived. Neither the company nor the union could survive a long strike. My guess is that this is a way of the union saying, "we're serious about these final points." Sometime you gotta do what you gotta do.

Questions and Rejections

I'm taking a short break from reloading and organizing the shelves and I check email. Strange Horizons just rejected My Favorite War Stories, but it's a really excellent rejection letter from one of the editors and the rejection basically boils down to SH really isn't interested in Cthulu horror. Fair cop (and I sort of knew that, but it's the editor's job to reject the manuscript, not mine to pre-reject and they didn't specifically say in their guidelines that they don't want it while they do specify other horror items they don't want). The editor then talks a little about the story, makes some comments about things that I questioned myself on (the first part of the story, which gives legitimancy to the characters, but doesn't advance the story much beyond that, and it's a matter of that it's a darling I didn't want to kill, my bad).

Anyway, I'm getting really nice rejection letters these days. Is it okay if you get a really nice rejection letter to respond with a "Thanks" email? I've seen other editors take submittors to task about bad responses to rejections (I'm thinking specifically about Nick Mamatas right at the moment). But is it okay to send a "Thanks for your time and comments. I really appreciated them. Maybe you'll find the next story I submit works better," kind of note?