Damned if you do...

Twitter brought me this link today, from @jrblackwell. In her blog post she talks about how people perceive her size:

Today I am Fat.

Yesterday I wrote a blog post about how I had a difficult time finding a bra in my size. Apparently, lots of other ladies experience this problem because I was reblogged on “I love Fat!” a fat acceptance blog... If a fat acceptance blog thinks I’m fat, then I should accept that I’m fat. The internet has spoken! And it’s spoken clearly. I’m fat.FAAAAAAT...

My hourglass shape has put me in some weird twilight-zone limbo where I have been called both “Too Thin” and “Too Fat”... I have been called “overweight”, “anorexic”, “out of shape” and “fit” in the space of a few days. I am clearly some magical weight - neither thin nor fat, though somehow both.

To me this perfectly illustrates the Damned-if-you-do, Damned-if-you-don't situation that women face. (Maybe I should say Damned-if-you-are, Damned-if-you-aren't, since a person's size and body attributes are only partly related to their own actions.) You've got to be thin, but not too thin or people ridicule you for not eating. You've got to be sexy and voluptuous with lots of cleavage, but if you have the body that tends to go with voluptuousness, you're scorned for being too fat.

Desirable body attributes are regarded as some kind of holy grail - until someone finds a negative attribute to harass you about. And god help you if you have a negative of your own to complain about. Blackwell mentions the envy women often express about the size of her breasts, but she experiences mostly inconvenience: catcalls, clothes that look immodest no matter how she tries for modesty, and the impossibility of finding a nice bra to fit her. How long, I wonder, before the snarky comments show up? What, you're complaining about getting attention from men? At least you have big boobs.

I debated about writing this post at all. I'm generally regarded as a thin person. Thin people aren't allowed to complain. Thin people are expected to stand there and take the ridicule, which shouldn't hurt them because they've got all that adoration to comfort them. (I'm still wondering what adoration that is). Complete strangers have walked up to me and said, "Oh my god, you're so skinny, I hate you." Uh, nice to meet you, too? People who see me eat normal food instead of the expected celery sticks go on about it for hours, weeks, any time they run into me. Have you seen how much she eats?!? The nicer people simply gaze at me in awe and ask how I do it. Well, it's a combination of genetics - which I have no control over - and a lack of emotional eating habits - mostly due to a mother who never told me that food is love.

And yet I'm still not up to par. Thin women are supposed to be sexy - they're supposed to earn all that envy and hatred. I have a plain face, not a vixenish one, I have cellulite (seriously - it's a spontaneous variety of fat cell, completely unrelated to obesity) and I have no breasts to speak of. Apparently I'm supposed to correct that last issue with my underwear choices. Blackwell talks about shopping for bras at Victoria's Secret, "a store that basically just does underwear for women," where she wrongly expected to find something nice in her size. I call them the Mammary Fascists. They only recently started offering bras in my size, and every one of them is a push-up bra. So I'm supposed to make my breasts look larger to impress - because really, who else am I fooling - total strangers. It's unthinkable that I would decide to ignore or even actively avoid the attentions of lustful people on the street.

It's time like this, seeing these posts, viewing Kate Harding's BMI project, reading Scoot Over, Skinny: The Fat Nonfiction Anthology, that I want to give women a big hug and say Sisters, you're all beautiful. Put on your favorite clothes and give the finger to Damned-if-you-do. I hope you'll pardon my skinny ass while I do so.

The Podcast Experiment

As I've mentioned at my website and on Twitter, and briefly here, I've been working on a podcast anthology. The plan was to collect music-themed speculative fiction short stories from members of my two writers' groups, and give us all an opportunity to experiment with this new media, get a little cross-promotion for ourselves and our other works, and - as some of our members were unpublished and others hadn't sold anything in a while - simply to create a publishing venue.

I wanted to release this online at its own website, at Podiobooks.com, and as a CD copy at World Fantasy Convention in November. I got nine stories and some great music, assembled them into eight episodes, and launched them the last week in October. I did a little promotion, got some other podcasts to run my promo, did a couple of interviews. We don't have a lot of listeners, but free podcast fiction is a very crowded market, and short fiction anthologies have never been big sellers unless they include really big names. The last episode runs next week. If it ends up being successful, I'd think about doing another volume in the future.

I say all this to remind myself of my original plan, and to remind myself that I've done exactly what I set out to do. I'm not a quitter, really.

While at WFC I talked to Mike Stackpole, who's become a major proponent of new media. He said my podcast sounds like a great idea, but I shouldn't stop at eight episodes. I should keep releasing a story a month, to keep the subscribers interested, and then I can keep dropping new content, news, and other features in the feed. It would be a great way for my authors to announce book releases, distribute sample chapters, and otherwise entice their devoted followers.

I said yes, it would be a good idea. And it would. It does, however, require two things: authors who can keep delivering content, and a crowd of devoted followers who subscribe to the feed.

So I set about trying to get more content from my authors. I got one story lined up for January. I got a nice piece of flash fiction, which would constitute about half an episode. I got several people who said they'd be interested in writing something when they had a chance, and one who sent me a story she wouldn't have time to record until several months from now. I got one story that was withdrawn by the author when he discovered a paying market to send it to. I never got a story for February.

I can't blame the authors. Keep in mind this is not a paying market. I'm asking my authors for a lot of work - not only writing to a specific theme, but undertaking the steep learning curve of recording and editing - for not a lot of payoff. It's definitely something I wanted to try, and so did my other authors, but asking them to commit to it again is a bit much for some. This is completely understandable. The whole prospect is a bit much for me. I've been looking at the impending load of monthly work and wondering when I'm going to have time to write.

There's also been a lot of talk in the blogosphere recently about how the publishing world really doesn't need a lot of low-paying markets: it doesn't help writers and it doesn't help readers. I don't want to become one of those redundant, low-(no-)paying, poorly regarded, for-the-love markets. I wanted to put together a music-themed anthology in podcast form and that's what I did.

Let's get to the next requirement: a crowd of devoted followers. According to my site statistics, I've got an average of about 15 listeners. About 23 downloads came from podcatchers, for an average (in week 6) of 4 subscribers. Four subscribers. I'm delighted to have four subscribers, and I hope they're enjoying the anthology. I hope all the listeners are. But it's hard to take hours/days/weeks out of your career and life to devote a project to an audience of four people, or even fifteen, and it's much harder to ask other authors to do so.

I understand that it takes time to grow an audience, and it's unlikely anyone could get lots of subscribers in eight weeks. If this were a long-term project, I would look at it much differently. My first eight weeks would be a trial period, testing the waters, building for the future. But this is not a long-term project. This is an anthology with a set number of episodes. It will continue to be available in the future, both at the antho website and at Podiobooks - people can drop in and listen at any time. If there's interest from both authors and listeners, I might do a second volume in the future. But going forward with my monthly plan is not going to happen. And I'm not "canceling" my podcast, either. It's not podfading. I'm not quitting. I did exactly what I set out to do.

(Do I sound like Sarah Palin yet? Eeesh!)

It's "Lost" in the Sahara

I was briefly excited to hear about the remake of The Prisoner. I saw the original about 15 years ago, and only saw the ads for the remake a few days before it premiered. In other words, not long enough to become jaded by the hype.

Anything that needs that much promotion, throughout the hour leading up to it, even during each commercial break, probably isn't going to live up to it.

What we had in the original is a spy who decided (for reasons I don't think we ever found out) to quit. Intelligence agencies don't really like their operatives to leave, knowing what they do, so they grab our spy and transport him to the Village, a sandy seaside locale where other retired spies are confined, kept in line by a giant white balloon that bounces along and suffocates anyone who tries to escape. (Seriously.) He's assigned the number 6 and antagonized by the supervisor of the village, known as 2. The show follows 6's attempts to a) escape and b) find out who number 1 is, punctuated by his insistence that "I am not a number, I am a free man!" You learn pretty much all of this in the first episode, if I recall correctly.

In the remake (oops, we call these "re-imaginings" now) we drift along in the desert for about half an hour without really understanding what's going on. We have no idea who this guy is or what he's doing here, and we only gradually learn that he's resigned from his job analyzing surveillance data. We don't know why he's been sent to the Village. He's told that there's nothing outside the Village and he's been there all his life, but he gradually regains his memories of his real life. At the end of the second hour his ranting about the outside world gets him sent to the loony bin in a self-love jacket (maybe - the straight jacket is inexplicably gone by the start of hour 3).

So here are the problems. First, analyst is a boring job. I'm not sure why they kept a totally cheesy thing like the giant white balloon - apparently because it's iconic - and didn't keep the equally iconic espionage angle. It's hard to believe that an AWOL analyst is a serious enough threat to construct the Village to contain it.

Second, there's little sense of threat. I wouldn't say they've humanized 2, as the IO9 article did - I get the feeling he's poisoning his wife and subtly terrorizing his son, setting him up for a violent rebellion - but he hasn't got the teeth that the original 2 had, at least not initially. The conflict between him and 6 is downplayed. And the villagers don't really seem threatened. The population has grown massively since the original and too many of them are blankly happy, or at least contentedly bored. When 2 summons one frightened couple to the Clinic, all he asks them for is a cherry cake. It's not a euphemism, either. He sits there and eats cake - that's all. It takes much too long to get a good sense that dissenters are eliminated, and dropping us into a run-of-the-mill dystopia, where we finally end up in the third hour, isn't very compelling.

Presumably the point of this all is to do a Twilight-Zone-esque examination of reality, questioning how we know what's really real. But like the superficially idyllic society that's actually violently totalitarian, the what-is-real story has been done almost to death, and there's nothing here that's new and exciting to differentiate itself.

But the biggest problem is that the show has chosen to be deliberately confusing. Lost might have succeeded with this tactic, but that success was an utter fluke, and it's nearly impossible to recreate a fluke. Sarah Connor Chronicles died in the attempt when it spent too many episodes wandering in the vague and confusing. The only people I can imagine sitting through The Prisoner despite having no idea what's going on are fans of the original, but so little of the original remains that they risk losing us as well.

So I guess we're just sitting around to watch Magneto battle it out with Jesus.

Update: night 2

They finally asked who is number 1. And dammit, they had an answer! They're not supposed to have an answer. 2 avoided the question throughout the original, which actually created intrigue. I suppose the answer given by the student could be a red herring, but I don't have a lot of hope.

Okay, I guess they have brought back the spy angle, but I'm not sure why. It doesn't mesh with the story at this point, doesn't seem necessary for the story, and feels tacked on. It's also a distraction. First he comes to the Village for reasons unknown, and then he becomes a "suspect," rather than being sent to the Village because of being a suspect. The investigation distracts us from and delays answering the question of why 6 is here to begin with. It's terribly unsatisfying. Then, in the fourth hour, it's suddenly gone. Was it that important if it's gone so quickly?

"Pig breath is an atmosphere stabilizer." Is this some kind of H1N1 reference? Like the mirage of the twin towers, it hints at significance without actually giving us any. Again, unsatisfying.

Update: night 3

Hey, it's finally starting to come together and make some kind of sense! 5 and 1/2 hours in. And with the exception of a lot of totally loose and rather unnecessary threads, of course.

We've also got more 1 references again. I seem to recall this figuring at the end of the original series, in a peculiar scene that was broken up with a big shoot-out to the tune of the Beatles' "All You Need is Love." In other words, there is some precedence for the confusing stuff.

I think my conclusion is going to be that it ended well, and it was highlighted by some strong performances. It could have been pretty good with a lot of tightening. But hype can only take you so far.

World Fantasy Convention in tweets, part three

(I'm going to attribute the delay in posting this to busy-ness, not laziness. I did, after all, have to drive back from San Jose, and go right back to work. And sleep, like a big old wimp.)

1st party: for Soulless launch, Victorian vampire novel. Women in corsets, men in coats and cravats. And finger food! (8:53 PM Oct 31st )

Now at the F&SF party. Much more low key. But the editor is tending bar. (9:16 PM Oct 31st) He offered me a drink twice, and I had to turn him down for fear of aggravating the crud I kept trying to catch all weekend.

Last day at #wfc2009. Didn't pony up for the banquet tix, so I'll have to come in late to the awards. Then find a dead dog party. (8:42 AM Nov 1st )

Man with one clock knows what time it is. Man from AZ in CA on daylight savings change weekend has no flippin idea. (9:09 AM Nov 1st)

At the World Fantasy awards, where aspiring writers go to wish one of those Easter Island head statues could be ours. (2:26 PM Nov 1st) Seriously, have you seen what these things look like?

As it turns out, we went back to the room to write. @lejonprime is doing #nanowrimo and I have a story. Must aspire to awards after all. (5:39 PM Nov 1st)

At ritzy hotel restaurant. Astonishingly, obscenely expensive. You have to order sides separately. 8-dollar potatoes. We have a gift card. (6:14 PM Nov 1st) ...and a $25 off coupon, and still we had a balance of $18.

In Lebec, halfway home from WFC. Cute hotel with a western theme, much much less expensive than the convention hotel (*natch*) (6:22 AM Nov 3rd)

Trying to get back on schedule after WFC. Alarm clocks, morning routine, work... Oh the horror! (7:04 AM Nov 4th)

And so here we are, two days later, and I'm still trying to catch up on everything I need to follow up on. And do laundry. *merg*

World Fantasy Convention in tweets, part two

Aw man, I missed the Tor party again? I always miss the Tor party! (about 12 hours ago)

Tummy grumbling, time for breakfast. Then to reading with @teemonster and @philippajane. (about 12 hours ago)

Ok, panel has just jumped the shark: was about religion, now about the history of California. (about 9 hours ago)

Just did an interview for Podioracket, promoting the podcast. It should run soon.(about 7 hours ago)

At the #wfc2009 panel on the history of F&SF magazine. With cat stories!(about 5 hours ago)

@monolithtoucher just did 2 great interviews with @philippajane and @teemonster. Look for them on http://touchingthemonolith.com (about 3 hours ago)

Dinner at House of Siam. Cute, tasty, ambiance, and staff dressed for halloween. Food comes out mild and you add spice at the table (about 2 hours ago)

Just did an interview with @monolithtoucher about http://themeandvariationsanthology.com. Look for it soon!(15 minutes ago)

The great thing about Twitter and #wfc2009: if you miss a panel, you can catch up on what was discussed. Thanks everyone!(3 minutes ago)

And a few non-Twitter comments: floss in the hotel gift shop going for only $3. A steal compared to their $17 razors.

And this time I'm going to get to some parties, dammit. I've had a 5-hr Energy - or half of one, so I should have 2 1/2 hours of energy - and I'm ready to go! Once hubby finishes flossing. [/TMI]

World Fantasy Convention in tweets, part one

Okay, I admit it. I've developed a sizable lazy streak. When I read in an article in Wired that you should get rid of your blog, no one reads them anymore, and you should use Twitter instead, I said "Great! Sign me up!" I can spend a week thinking that I ought to write a blog post and never get around to sitting down and doing it, but I can handle 140 characters once in a while!

So at some point I'll post my more insightful reflections on this year's World Fantasy Convention, but for now I present the following observations in 140 characters or less:

Oh so *that's* what the hashtag is! At #wfc2009 late Thursday, after a 15-hr drive. Might be awake to meet people at the bar? (8:25 AM Oct 28th)

We are in San Jose. Made good time: only 12 hours. Now to find the hotel. In downtown. In rush hour. (about 22 hours ago)

Swanky. I've never stayed at a hotel where they give you robes before! (about 21 hours ago)

In San Jose? Eat at Mezcal, amazing Oaxacan food. (about 20 hours ago)

Morning in San Jose. Or something like that. Why do hotels always give me itchy, tired eyes and make me thirsty? (maybe don't want to know) (about 8 hours ago)

Just checked in and got the Bag Of Doom - free books! Now to sort them. Oh, and go to a panel some time. (about 6 hours ago)

Today at #wfc2009 met some authors at breakfast. Then the man who might be my future editor. Professional, efficient, kind of intimidating. (3 minutes ago)

Then to the room to pass out for 2 hrs. Still zonked from yesterday's long drive. I'm like seafood leftovers - I don't travel well. (2 minutes ago)

Just as long as they stop making shoes

A friend of mine used to give this as her answer when someone asked how it was going: "Okay, just as long as they stop making shoes." The explanation went like this: Yes, she was doing just fine, but she was a little skeptical about things continuing to go well. It was like - as they say - waiting for the other shoe to drop. So if they stop making shoes, then there will be no other shoe to drop, and things will continue in their current rosy state.

I offer this as explanation for not blogging in a while. It's related to this little ol' podcast I'm working on. It's going fairly smoothly, counting down to the launch date in two weeks. Actually, things have been blowing up left and right: audio problems, my authors fighting with Audacity (which is so easy to do, really), upload problems, missing links, missing data, discovering that I'm exceeding my web host's disk space by almost double, frantically trying to change webhosts before the launch, trying to navigate the oddities of my new webhost, my color printer not wanting to print, having to discard a pile of flyers that I did manage to print because the art was wrong, discovering that a font I used is totally nonstandard and converts to hieroglyphics on any computer other than my own... and that's before I've even started burning CDs yet.

But I've been managing to put the fires out and keep everything on track, more or less. And I think I can pull it all together by the launch date (October 28, btw - be there or be square! Or something). Just as long as they stop making shoes.