Hello Montreal!

A bit out of synch with the blog posts, but I shall try to rectify that.

On Thursday I flew from Boston to Montreal. I slept the whole way, all 45 minutes of it. I didn't even feel the plane touch down, just slept right through it. Very nice.

At Montreal's airport I had to go through not only customs but also immigration. They had all sorts of questions, wanted to see my credit card, asked repeatedly what I was doing in Canada, etc. It wasn't rude or anything, but it actually felt like more scrutiny then I've gone through whenever I've traveled to the US, which I find interesting.

Then I took a bus into the city. On the way I noticed a poster for a metal festival. Kiss as headliner, and I was about to dismiss it when my eyes caught some more bands further down. Machine Head. In Flames. Etc. Cool.

My hotel is OK. Somewhat old and worn, and my bathroom, which isn't shared, is across the hall. Building layout planning at its best. But the place is charming and placed well between downtown Montreal and the Old Port.

Thursday I went exploring down towards Old Montreal and the Old Port. Old Montreal itself turned out to be just like most of Gamla Stan in Stockholm. One giant tourist trap. I found a nice café that had all organic food, where I got a very nice soup and a chicken curry that was really good.

Blog-posing in front of Cirque de Soleil's tent

setup for their show Totem, down at the Old Port.

I walked over to the Notre-Dame Basilica and took the brief tour.

The altar space in the Basilica.

My way back was through Chinatown, which also screamed Tourist Trap in big garish neon letters, surrounded by small plastic cats waving with one paw. There was a small street market with all kinds of knick-knacks and cheap crap on display. Much to my surprise they had a stand of bokken. I was not surprised they were all crooked, unlike the one I have that I assume was whittled out of a hundred foot oak by a small old Japanese man using nothing but his eye-lashes (thanks again for that gift, bro).

Then the heat got to me, so I had a quick meal at a Chinese place and then went to the hotel to hug the AC.

Sleep now in the fire

Today editor John Joseph Adams held a lecture about publishing short fiction. He is the current editor of Lightspeed and Fantasy, and has edited a number of anthologies of sf, fantasy, etc.

He talked about how to grab an editor's attention, what he wants as an editor, what he doesn't want, what a cover letter is supposed to include, how not to behave (don't reject the rejections!), how to handle questions around rights, exclusivity and reversion clauses, etc.

Lots and lots of non-creative stuff, but very important once I start sending stuff out to be published.

I got to sleep last night. It cooled down during the night. Now it's humid as hell again, so I won't get my hopes up for tonight. We'll see.

I turned in my final story for critique last night. Unmade, an apocalyptic fantasy story that I'm sort of happy with. If the others are remains to be seen. I am reading it out loud to a group of people later tonight.

So now I have no more stories to turn in. I will try and finish one more this week, and then Odyssey is over. So strange that six weeks have passed already, even though it feels like I've been here for months.

I shall now go read a story and write a crit for it. I shall leave you with some quotes.

Meta, about Party Planner: Not only did she write the shortest story today, now she brings us popsicles too. I may have to revise my crit.

John Joseph Adams, about writing a bio in a cover letter: Don't write "Oooh, I'm on Facebook, I'm on Twitter!" No one cares.

Kill. Crush. Destroy

Almost no sleep last night. Fragments of it, here and there, but that's it. I want a word or two with whoever designed our apartment. Apartments in the other house are much cooler, since they can get a cross breeze going.

So today I hate everyone in Sweden, where it's supposedly 22 degrees. Well, not everyone. But most of them. It's going up to 35 here today, and the humidity is brutal.

I almost had a meltdown yesterday, around 6:30. I made the best decision ever and went to the airconditioned awesomeness that is the reading room. Bliss. So today I'm going right after class.

Tonight editor John Joseph Adams arrives, and will hold a lecture tomorrow. Very appropriate, since this week is focused on the business end of things. How to find an agent, how to write a query letter, etc. Very interesting stuff, and since I haven't submitted a single thing, ever, and have done no research on markets, ever, it's vital info to me if I am going to get stuff out later this year.

Now, class. First, quote.

Meta: It seemed funny that Angelina thought black lace and a frog was a good sex-me-up look.

SUNCT. And a haunted house

Today has been a weird one. I woke up to The Headache. I was supposed to go listen to the monks do Gregorian chants in the chapel on campus, but no. Back to bed.

It's been with me all day. I've had maybe twenty attacks, none of them as bad as when I'm not on the drugs, but bad enough. Afterwards I almost always get a regular headache, so I've had that all day. Thanks Ibuprofen, for giving me a few hours' relief.

I got some writing done. I finished The Godslayer, my apocalyptic fantasy story that I am turning in on Wednesday morning. Getting it done today was nice, now I have a few nights to revise it. In the end, I might not turn it in, if I have the stones to write another story. We'll see.

Other activities today have included a trip to Barnes & Noble, not-as-good-as-Nadeau's subs and an hour and a half long walk with Party Planner (yes, alright, enough with the Palin now, we're after all in week six as of 28 minutes ago) and Alaska.

There are all kinds of sights on the walk, things we tend to go by every time. The fireflies on the field. The monk graveyard. The stone head. The haunted house (only some times).

As we neared the graveyard today we heard what sounded like a sprinkler. We've never heard a sprinkler there before, or even seen one. "A moose peeing," I said. We got out of there quickly. Our final theory? One hundred monk zombies pissing.

We decided to take the long long route, past the haunted house. It's a big old house with a barn and old stables right next to it. Every time we go by, which is always after ten p.m., there are cars outside and the lights are on in the back rooms. It looks like they're renovating it. Tonight as we passed, a black cat sat in the second story window, silhouetted by those lights. If ever there was a cat that looked like it belonged to a wicked witch, it was that one.

So, I'm not sure I'm going by that house ever again... I will really miss those walks. We talk about our stories and life, the universe and everything. Also, they're a good way to at least pretend I'm walking off a few of the endless number of cookies I have eaten over these five weeks.

Now bed. First, quotes.

This one from when we were out driving the other day, on our way to whereever.

Me: Where does this road go?

Peeko: To our doom. Let's go.

This one as we were driving with the Commodore to a book store and were passed by an Evil Truck (long story to explain that one) and someone remarked that evil is fast.

Dundee: Evil doesn't have to be fast. Evil is the tortoise. It's inevitable.

And finally a pic. This should have been posted in the last post, but I forgot. From the Friday night barbecue:

Darth Narcomancer, resident Odyssey Sith Lord

Long Night

I've had two long nights these past two, since I haven't been able to sleep because my bedroom is so muggy (yes, Erin, this will be another post where I rant about heat). Our apartment must have some major design flaw, since the others are nice and cool when the temperature drops in the evening. Not ours, no no no.

Right now it's sort of fine, at least in the livingroom where I am now. It's raining, so I'm hoping for a cool night. That's a win. The fail? I had left my windows open when we went to dinner tonight, so my bed is wet. D'oh.

Gary Braunbeck has been lecturing for us this week, and it's been really interesting. The subjects so far have been dialogue, subtext and emotional realism. He has 25 years experience as a writer, and has a lot of knowledge on the subject of writing.

What's easy to forget in a situation like this, with so many people offering excellent advice on various tools for writing and aspects of the industry, is that these things don't work for everyone. These are not truths we are being told, but rather an opinion on something born out years of experience. Each writer has their own truth. I need to find mine.

What has really stood out from Gary's lectures, so far, is this:

- Forget about genre. Concentrate on telling a story. Genre will emerge. Beginning with genre will limit you.

- Always ask the next question. When creating a character, begin with a question. What does he have in his pockets? Then keep asking, depending on what the answer is. Do this enough, and you will have a complete character. Ask until you reach an answer that has absolutely no relevance to the story.

- Give your antagonist/villain an emotional core. Something that shows why he is not a villain in his own eyes. This creates an emotional gray area, and enables you to steer away from the monologuing, moustache-twirling bad guy.

- What is lacking in genre fiction is a writer's trust in his readers to recognize subtext. Assume you're not writing for morons. Don't explain everything.

On Monday, I had a private critique with Gary on my story The Long Night. It has Vikings, werewolves and a bad-ass sorceress. Right now she is kinda moustache-twirling, unfortunately. But it's only the second draft, so things may change.

He really liked the story. A great ego boost. He had some minor suggestions for things I should change, and then listed a few places where he thought I could get it published. Sweet! So now I have two stories that two different authors have put their seal of approval on. Priority one when I get back home is polishing these stories and then sending them out.

Last night, I was over at the other house, writing, because it was cooler there. Well, not so much writing as goofing around and talking about our stories. In the midst of it, Narcomancer comes out of her room, looking exhausted. The following was said:

Palin: Do you need a hug?

Narcomancer: I need a new brain.

And on the same subject (sort of). The Commodore informed us about Friday night's cookout and said:

The Commodore: There's a slight chance of rain.

Werefox Ninja: Brain?

The Commodore: Yes. Brain is in season now. We could harvest some of that college student brain.

In bed. And fireflies.

In class today we talked about grammar. Punctuation, that vs which, the evils of adverbs, dialogue tags, etc.

Can you believe it, Mom? Me? Talking about adverbs? And not cringing? Well . . . I cringed a little (and right there, before I, is the correct way to use ellipsis. See? I learned something today).

After class and the obligatory visit to the mail room (three packages. All for me! Yay! From Amazon! Yay!) we went to the reading room to do our crits. The reading room is my friend. The reading room is cool. Cold, even. I had to put on a hoodie in there today.

Later today I went to the Taqueria in Manchester with Meta, Charley and Sarah Palin. Much laughter and an awesome burrito. Me likey! Then off to Target to buy food, ink cartridges, etc. I bought a pair of shorts, since I only brought two pairs, and a Where The Wild Things Are-tee. Sweet.

And then write. I am writing a postapocalyptic fantasy story. Sort of. My goal is to have it be around 4000, maybe 5000 words. Our limit is 6000 and I would like to turn in a story to the class that doesn't require a synopsis for the parts I can't turn in. We'll see how it goes. I managed 2000 words today. Which is good.

I have two stories left to turn in. My intention is to use this new one and a revised version of Something Wicked, my submission story. One is due next Friday and the second one the last week, hopefully Wednesday. We'll see. So I have a long time to finish two stories but little time once one is submitted.

I ended the evening with a short walk with Sarah Palin, to get some air. We saw fireflies! I've never seen fireflies before. I really understand why people thought they were fairies.

The other night we went for Chinese food. Barbecue Man had identified a good place, and it was really good. Unfortunately they didn't offer Dim Sum (I wanted dumplings!) the time we were there. And unfortunately I can't remember between which hours they do serve dumplings, so I'll probably miss it the next time we go too. D'oh.

Anywho. The first time we went for Chinese I learned that one must add a little something to the fortune in the cookie. I forgot to tell you people, of course. You add "in bed" at the end. Hence my fortune, this time, was "You have a quiet and unobtrusive nature. In bed."

So now off to be unobtrusive in bed. I will leave you with some quotes:

From Meta:

Conjunctions for the win!

From Sarah Palin, after the car ride to the Taqueria and Target:

All sorts of weird stuff are going to show up in my story because you guys traumatized me.

And from Mr Stephen King:

The road to hell is paved with adverbs.

How many monkeys?

Brief status report. More later.

Hot today. They say it will be like this all week. I will hunker down in the airconditioned reading room in the science center as much as possible. Today I am doing laundry, though, so I'm stuck in the apartment, hugging two floor fans.

Later today, our friendly neighborhood food geek Barbecue Man is firing up the grill. I have a steak marinating right now. Nom nom nom.

I turned in my text last night, at 0130. 5971 words, 29 under the limit. Skillz! The last third of the text is chaotic and all over the place, but that is sort of the point. We don't turn in texts to impress anyone, we do it to become better writers.

Discussing the text with Meta spawned the following quote on his part:

You realise that is the worst pickup line ever? "So, what's a Moorish sorceress like you doing in an 11th century Sweden like this?"

When we came to Odyssey, each of us brought a short story we wanted to share with the class. Meta and I both brought Kij Johnson's 26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss. Read it. Read it now.

Current

Current text: The Long Night. Vikings and were-creatures.

Current attitude to text: frustration.

Current state of mind: slight panic (text deadline 0730 tomorrow morning).

Current state of body: hot.

Current state of headache: a four on a scale of one to ten, where zero is absolutely none and ten is on the floor curled up in a foetal position crying.

Current state of stomach: hungry.

Current state of room: messy.

Current schedule for the day: write, eat, write, write, breathe, write, write, write, write, eat, write, write, write, maybe sleep.

More later. Maybe.

Table of contents

19:24 (7:24 pm for those of you that can't tell time correctly).

Current contents of livingroom:

One Swedish author/geek/bearded thing.

One American/Canadian author/geek/musician/lots of other stuff.

One American author/geek/teacher(soon)/madman.

One Samsung laptop.

Two MacBooks.

Laptop bag.

Backpack.

Assorted LAN cables.

Tiny iPod headphones.

Big Sony headphones.

Printer.

Stapler.

Big stack of paper.

Two floor fans.

One table-mounted fan.

Three bottles of water.

Can of Sprite.

Can of Coke.

Bag of peanut M&Ms

Bag of pretzel-like things.

Stack of books (Embassytown by China Mieville, On Writing Horror edited by Mort Castle, Shadows edited by Charles L Grant, Altman's Tongue by Brian Evenson, Toybox by Al Sarrantonio).

Chez Cthulhu (a card game)

About 30 000 words worth of manuscripts.

Assorted handouts and folders and stuff.

And heat. Lots and lots of horrible heat.

Weekend writing

The day in short.

Critiqued one story out of two for the weekend.

Grocery shopping. Junk food. Bananas. Mop.

Subs at Nadeau's.

Off to a skateboard shop we passed the other day. Turned out to be skate shop. As in hockey. Fail.

Stopped at a yard sale. A Ramones poster for 5 dollars for Charley, a 1 dollar VAST cd for me.

Trip to the local comic book store with seven students and Assistant Teacher. Bought Hellboy tee, Spawn TPB and three blind assortment Kid Robot figures. Moe, Peter Griffin, Evil Monkey. Win!

Slept for half an hour. Or rather, was rendered unconscious by the heat for half an hour.

Listened to Dry Kill Logic about three hours in total.

Walked around campus with Charley, to clear our heads.

The administrative center at the college. And Charley.

Last Saturday I poured out 5000 words, on Sunday 1000. Today the weather has been working against me. However, as darkness settled and the heat dissipated, I started writing. 2000 words of high fantasy story (sorcery, living mountains, Old Gods, the works) and maybe 500 on my scifi story. Good job.

Tomorrow in short.

Critiquing one story.

Finishing the scifi story.

Off to eat at an actual restaurant with actual menues and an actual waiter.

Watch X-Men: First Class

On Monday I get my first in-class critique. Nervous, but excited. Bring it on.

Almost fun

Second day of proper workshopping.

"What's the plural of status?" I asked Guitar today in class.

"Statii. If he speaks Latin", he answered,

"Yeah. A guy in a mechanised combat suit is gonna speak Latin..."

"He might. If the suit was tweed."

Yesterday and today we did some work after class at the library. Cool, quiet, comfortable. "We close at 4:30 on Wednesdays and Thursdays", they said today. So back to the apartment we went. Hellish heat. We have three large floor fans working hard to keep us cool.

"The only way to work here is in a windtunnel", Guitar said. So true.

We have a few laughs, Guitar, Charley Horse (this being the other guy I share the apartment with) and I. Today we took a short break in writing, had some snacks and water, and shared a few jokes. Suddenly we were back to writing.

"We almost had fun there for a second", Charley said.

But don't get me wrong. This is going to be an awesome experience, and we will have fun.

Tomorrow is Thursday. Hellday. Three texts to critique, one journal entry to write, and a one-hour reception for our first visiting author. Prediction for Friday? Zombeard.

The day before the day

This is the day before the official start of the Odyssey writing class. I am nervous and elated at the same time. I have no idea of what to expect of tomorrow, except highly creative people in a highly creative environment.

"There will be laughter and there will be tears", the teacher said today at dinner.
"Yeah", the assistant teacher said. "Our laughter and your tears."

Seated now on the bed in my bedroom, in the apartment that I share with two other students. All around me, my luggage seems to have exploded, a state in which I am guessing it will stay for six weeks. The room is unbelievably hot. No AC. In the US. What the hell?

I realize I probably won't have much time to write here, and when I do, it will be short. Once the class is over there will be more time. For now, bookmark or whatever, and read when I write. Good night.