Tuesday, May 22, 2018

How to find me at ConFuzzled

Hi, folks. It's only one day until I get on a plane and head to sunny-- *checks weather*  Er, stormy England! I am so, so excited to visit again and get a chance to meet and visit with furries from the UK and--I understand--a lot of Europe as well! SO EXCITED. And a tiny bit nervous! I really hope I do a good job!

But for those who are interested in meeting me or getting books or signatures, you'll probably want to know where I'll be! Below is my schedule for the con.

Please note that when I am not at events, I do have a table in the Dealer's Den and will have books available for purchase or signature! I'm not sure where my table is yet, but look for my books stacked up and maybe some FREE CANDY??


Thursday:

Thursday is my arrival day. I expect to be pretty much a zombie, so that's a great time to find out what my brain acts like when it's half shut-down and crazy. I'll probably sack out early, but who knows! There's always time for a beer, right? 



Friday:

Opening Ceremony
Time: 8 pm - 9
Location: Main Stage

Where it all begins! Come and share in starry-eyed wonder as MattLion declares ConFuzzled officially open -- or, if you're more the cynical type, come and wait impatiently for him to finish so the first dance can begin.

After this I MAY drop by the Pub Quiz -- that's from 10 pm - midnight on the second stage.


Saturday:

Writers' Coffeehouse
Panelists: Kandrel
Time: 10 am - Noon
Location: Colonial

Writers: Start the con off correctly by shunning your comfortable gloom and greeting the daystar. Biscuits sweet as sin, coffee black as midnight, and tea British as a half-hearted apology will be provided.


Meet the Guests of Honor
Time: 2 pm - 3
Location: Second Stage

Come meet the talented artist Dark Natasha and the just-as-talented furry fiction writer Ryan Campbell in person and ask them questions about their craft.
---
Your humble Content Writers have been assured that despite her name, Natasha is actually visible in daylight, and that Ryan is not the first GoHst writer we've invited to the convention.


Defeating the Blank Page
Panelists: Ryan Campbell, Jeeves, Televassi
Time: 6 pm - 7
Location: Terrace

Can't figure out how to take what's in your head and... uh... um... word good? Come along and get some advice from a couple of folks who have stared writer's block in the eye, then poked it with a pen till it went away.


Sunday:

Editing, Submitting, Publishing
Panelists: Ryan Campbell, Huskyteer, Jakebe
Time: 11 am - noon
Location: Wellington

You finished your story and typed THE END. Now comes the hard part! Find out how to get your story ready for publication, and what really happens after you submit it.


Reading with Ryan Campbell
Panelists: Ryan Campbell
Time: 2 pm - 3
Location: Colonial

Stay a while and listen. Ryan will read excerpts from his books and stories in a comfortable, relaxed setting.


Not certain yet what I'll read here. I might poll the audience.


Brainstorming in Real Time
Panelists: Ryan Campbell
Time: 6 pm - 7
Location: Colonial

Ryan explains how he brainstorms for story ideas. He'll show how it works -- then you get to try it out for yourself!


Monday:

Flash Fiction Competition
Panelists: Huskyteer, Kandrel
Time: 11 am - 12:30
Location: Colonial

A CHALLENGER HAS APPEARED! Can you write your game story in 5 sentences or fewer? Many have tried. Few have succeeded. Each year, one story is chosen from the competitors to ascend! Glory is rained upon the victor. In addition, their stories have been illustrated by one of the Guests of Honour! Do you have what it takes? Visit the ConFuzzled website (under Events) for details about entering. All are welcome to come and listen to the stories, whether or not they've submitted an entry.


World Building in Fiction and RPGS
Panelists: Ryan Campbell, Jakebe, Jeeves, Kandrel
Time: 3 pm - 4
Location: Second Stage

Every story takes place somewhere. Join our discussion on what goes into building a truly memorable, lived-in world for your fiction. Suitable for writers, game masters, and all other kinds of storytellers alike.
try it out for yourself!


Tuesday:

Closing Ceremony
Time: Noon - 1
Location: Main Stage

It's not over 'till it's over! Come and wrap up the con, and learn about what's in store next time.

Thanks everyone! Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Friday, January 8, 2016

Further Confusion 2016

Hi, everyone! So I'll be at Further Confusion this year (of course! I've only missed one FC during its entire run!) and I'll be on no fewer than SIX panels this year. Here's my schedule in case youse guys wanna come see me bloviate!

Note that I'll also be signing books at the FurPlanet and Sofawolf tables this weekend, most likely Saturday -- these will include my recent releases, Koa of the Drowned Kingdom and Forest Gods, the sequel to God of Clay. My books tend to sell out at this con, so come by early!

Friday:

Telling a New Story
Panelists: Kyell Gold, Ryan Campbell, Watts Martin (Chipotle)
Time: 11 am - 12:30 
Location: Hilton, Santa Clara room

We've all seen the slice-of-life college romance, the medieval quest fantasy, and the anime-inspired action story. But furry fiction is growing out as well as up. What are the new types of stories being told now, and how can we use the furry aesthetic to explore modern themes?

Power and Privilege in an Anthropomorphic World
Panelists: Jakebe, Ryan Campbell, Watts Martin (Chipotle)
Time: 1 pm - 2:30 
Location: Hilton, Santa Clara room

What would a society with different species look like? Given what we know about the forces of privilege in our own world, how could the physical advantages and disadvantages of different species shape society? And if there were humans as well, what places might they occupy in such a world?


Saturday:

Adult Furry Fiction
Panelists: Kyell Gold, Rukis, Ryan Campbell
Time: 10 pm - 11:30 
Location: Hilton, Santa Clara room

Adult stories are a mainstay in the furry fiction world. Listen to some experienced authors talk about how—and why—to create effective adult stories.


Sunday:

Brainstorming in Real Time
Panelists: Jakebe, Kyell Gold, Ryan Campbell, Watts Martin (Chipotle)
Time: 11 am - 12:30 
Location: Hilton, Santa Clara room

Your first idea is seldom your best idea. Our panelists talk about the process of idea generation and will demonstrate in real-time the value of brainstorming and digging deep into the well of creativity. Leave this panel with free story ideas!


Tricks of the Action Scene
Panelists: Chandra al-Alkani, Mary E. Lowd, Ryan Campbell
Time: 5 pm - 6:30 
Location: Hilton, Santa Clara room

Everyone remembers great action scenes they loved from the movies. But trying to write these scenes into books and stories can be challenging. Panelists talk about their strategies for pacing, stage-setting, and narrating action that is still exciting and engaging to read.


Unsheathed Live!
Panelists: Kyell Gold, Rikoshi, Ryan Campbell
Time: 10 pm - 11:30 
Location: Hilton, Santa Clara room

Come see Kyell Gold, K. M. Hirosaki, and Not Tube in an entertaining podcast about furry fandom, writing, and definitely not manatees.

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

6 Unbelievable Facts About Unicorns That Will Completely Blow Your Mind

Okay, so I know what you’re about to say: that unicorns aren’t real. Believe me, that’s what I thought, too, and I’ve got a BS in Cryptozoology—you know, the study of folk tale creatures like yeti or chupacabras. People ask me why I went into it, and the reasons come out to about fifteen percent genuine interest, twenty-five percent pissing off my dad, ten percent drunken bet with my girlfriend Yuka, and a good half because I figured I’d graduate college with an easy degree. I figured after graduation I’d make bank writing for some tabloid or other. Then after my sophomore year we all hear from our professors that unicorns have been sighted on several islands in Indonesia. You might remember the brief news stories about it. Hit all the airwaves for about two weeks and when no one could get any video, it all died down. There’s not much information, except that apparently they look like classical unicorns. You know, giant toy-set white horses with narwhal corkscrews sticking up out of their foreheads. They do a lot of shit that can’t be explained and they have a bad habit of disappearing without leaving even a hair behind.

So all of a sudden my bullshit degree gets real serious. We start getting deep into legends and folklore, translating old documents with sightings, that sort of thing. Figuring out what might be real and what might not, which if you ask me is never what cryptozoology was supposed to be about. I had to take a class called—swear to Buddha—Theoretical Biology. It’s all about how mythical creatures might have functioned. Believe me, you’ve never felt like you’ve wasted your life into you’ve read a giant treatise on how dragons might have been able to fly and breathe fire and leave zero trace in the fossil record. Meanwhile, there’s practically no information coming out about the actual real life unicorns which everyone swears up and down exists. Pretty suspicious, I thought.

Anyway, all of a sudden I have to do real work, and it’s a pain in the ass, but what am I going to do, fess up that I was never that interested to begin with after I swore up and down that no dad, this is serious, this is a real degree? So whatever, I bust my ass at it, and my senior year, my Unnatural History professor, Dr. Czerwienski takes me aside and asks how I’d like to make a trip to Indonesia to work with actual unicorns. And of course I’m skeptical this is all some sort of awful scam and I’m going to wake up in an ice bath missing my Islets of Langerhans. But of course you can’t say no when someone asks if you want to take care of a real live unicorn, especially when you’ve got one of the only actual degrees in cryptozoology in the country. Thanks, International University of Metaphysics in Phoenix.

So that’s where I’ve been the last three years. Keeping watch over a unicorn on a swampy little shithole island. Believe me, I know as much as anyone ever will about unicorns. A lot of the stuff you’ve probably heard is true. But it’s all worse. All of it.

1. Unicorns are not intelligent animals.


Here’s how my day normally starts: Wham! Wooooonk! Wooooonk! That first sound is what wakes me up. It’s Ctesias, my unicorn, slamming his horn into the side of the little house they built for me here. The next noises are him bellowing because he’s stuck and too dim to know how to get free. Usually this is accompanied by the house walls shaking as he wrenches his powerful neck from side to side and, well, any direction except backward. He does this nearly every day, and no one can explain why. I think every night when he goes to sleep, he forgets the house exists, and in the morning mistakes it for a giant animal and attacks it. He’ll keep wonking until I roll out of bed and go pull him free, so I do. When I go outside, the sun’s barely up and Ctesias is glaring at me with one irritatingly violet eye like all this is my fault. His horn’s wedged good and deep in the wall, buried today in what looks like might be the backside of my refrigerator. I used to at least think about getting into my hazard suit first—a big, heavy, full-body thing that’s supposed to keep us from coming in contact with the unicorn—but let’s face it, that ship sailed a long time ago, and besides, he gets even madder if I don’t help him out right away. “Fuck you, Teez,” I tell him in my nicest voice, and then I grab onto his big neck and pull him out. He smells like key lime pie.

Also, the hole in the wall has healed up. Everything his horn touches heals. Which is good, because I have to pull it out of my house nearly every freaking morning and if it didn’t fix itself, my place would eventually have collapsed on my in my sleep.

He’s not grateful, though. He just gives me this haughty, annoyed expression like he had been doing important stuff with his head stuck to the wall. He gives this prancing trot away and gets his food bucket stuck on one hoof. The last few steps are a gangling, clanking stumble, until finally he gives up, stares back at me, and drools.

Once he’s settled down, I’ll go down to the dock and scan the water with a telescope they gave me to make sure there are no boats out there. We’ve got a sophisticated alarm that will go off too, but I try to keep that from happening because Ctesias doesn’t like it. So I spend a lot of my day staring out over the ocean. We can’t be seen here. That’s my main job, protecting this stupid animal. I’ll explain later. Anyhow, coast clear, I’ll go out on the dock where Putri will be waiting in her own little boat, one that doesn’t set off the alarm. It’s hard to tell how old she is. Her face looks like a lumpy potato, brown from the sun and red from windburn. I think she’s married, but she has no children. No one with children is allowed near the island. I'll get to that, too.

She’ll start unloading crates filled with food, like they weigh nothing. I used to try to help, but she gave me the impression I was only getting in her way. She’s tiny, but freakishly strong. “What today?” She asks like she’s bored. Even though she never says more than two words in a breath, you can tell she thinks there are way better ways for all us researchers to spend our time than farting around out here caring for a fantastical creature that appears to be able to do actual magic.

“Skittles,” I tell her. “And marshmallows.”

She nods. I’ve never seen her write anything down, but then, we’re not supposed to. No pen or paper near the island. The Skittles and marshmallows are what Ctesias has been eating most of lately. His preferences change from day to day, but they definitely focus on candy. As far as we can tell, that’s because it’s what he thinks unicorns are supposed to eat. When the first researchers showed up, the unicorns ate mostly grass and leaves. Within about a day, they were demanding hamburgers and chocolate, and when no one gave them any, they began starving themselves to death. Like they just stopped eating until their ribs were showing, and refused any other food except hamburgers and chocolate.

The list of what I’ve had to feed them includes fried chicken, sushi, curries, marzipan, Turkish delight, pure molasses, and nearly every kind of candy ever made. Unicorns lose a lot of their romantic appeal after you’ve seen one terrified because its jaws are stuck together with Sugar Daddys. Stupid things.

2. Unicorns are science-proof.


When I first arrived on the island three years ago, the research team sends me up onto the island with basically nothing—no phone, no laptop, no notebooks. Nothing that could be used to record any information about this thing. I’m thinking shit, there’s no calling for help, nothing. I’m scared, the air is hot and muggy, bugs are biting me already, the ground is holding more water than dirt and squelching at my shoes, and there’s no doubt in my mind that this is all some sort of awful trick and I’m going to be held for ransom or something like that.

Then I head further into the island and I see it: gorgeous, like a horse-shaped opening into a world of light. It stares at me and I think it must be looking straight into all the awful things I’ve ever done, judging the absolute worst of me. It nickers, and I hear in the sound the traces of old songs from my childhood, the ones I can’t quite remember anymore. Then it shits this long, viscous stream of clear goo all over the ground. There’s a bonus fact for you about unicorns:

2a. Unicorns shit everywhere, and it’s super gross.


Anyway, Fauzi, the guy who was the keeper before me, comes down to meet me. He keeps giving me these long, wondrous looks, like I’m the first person he’s seen in a decade. Although that can’t be the case since he’s probably younger than I am. But every time I look over my shoulder, he’s staring at me. It starts to get creepy. He tells me about feeding Ctesias, shows me the little house, which is about the size of a college dorm, with a fridge and an old TV/VCR. There’s a little, uncomfortable cot at one corner, and a bare desk with a reading lamp. A tiny bathroom with a healthy supply of safety razors. I’m supposed to keep clean shaven because, Fauzi says, beards freak out unicorns. Like they think it’s a cat attacking your face, or your head’s turned around backward.

But there’s no computer. No phone. No easy way to stave off the boredom day in and out. Half-shoved under the cot, there’s also a stack of what is pretty plainly some kind of Indonesian gay porn. I look back over my shoulder and he’s staring at me again, and now I get it. Poor guy stuck out here on this island for God knows how long.

I shake my head at him. “It’s cool and everything but I’ve got a girlfriend, you know?”

He just sniggers at me, which kind of pisses me off. What’s so fucking funny about that? Oh well, I tell myself. Isolation’s made him a bit bonko. I shrug it off and ask him about the job, so he explains about feeding, tells me about the hazard suit, and the water pump for washing away all the unicorn shit. And about the guns.

Yeah, guns. Because I’ve got to use them to scare people off from the island. Poachers? I ask, and he says yeah, maybe, but really it’s more for researchers. Scientists. Photographers. People who might come round to have a look and measure the creature. Unicorns can’t abide being reported or measured. As soon as you do, they disappear. Like, vanish into the aether. No one knows for sure if they just teleport someplace else, go to another plane, or wink out of existence, but seems that’s why it took so long to verify they were real, even after lots of confirmed sightings. We don’t even know why they do it, but there are some solid arguments that it comes from having a lot of plainly magical powers and a pretty dim understanding of quantum mechanics. As soon as they feel like they’re being actively observed, they’re not there anymore.

So Fauzi explains that because unicorns are this rare and amazing phenomenon that no one’s figured out how to study, I’ve got to guard them and scare off unscrupulous researchers, who I guess will be coming about with cameras and scales or yardsticks or something. I don’t know. Degree in cryptozoology, remember?

A couple times a week, more when it’s not monsoon season, the prox alarm will go off, scaring the literal shit out of Ctesias. While he’s wonking and galloping around in terror like dragons are attacking, I’ll grab my earmuffs, telescope, and rifle, and head down to the pier. I’ll check for boats and if they start coming close, I’ll fire a warning shot or two. The rifle’s got a muzzle brake that makes it sound way louder—that’s what the earmuffs are for. The sound goes cracking out over the water like I’ve just fired a damn cannon. If they were poachers, they might have come closer, but so far every boat’s been researchers, and they don’t like being shot at. Not like I’d actually shoot at any of them. Not for this worthless beast. There have been mornings when I’ve woken up to it stuck in the side of the house, wonking, and wanted nothing more than to run outside with a camera and stick that shit on the Internet. But on the island there are no cameras and no Internet, so no dice.

3. You never want to pet a unicorn.


I told you about the hazard suit we’re supposed to wear. See, coming into contact with a  unicorn has consequences. This is where I have to talk about my girlfriend, Yuka. She’s sexy, smart, and edging out upper middle class into rich. Owns three chiropractor locations and she’s only twenty-eight. Killed in business school. She and I hooked up at my college during some metaphysical healing seminar and then fucked like bunnies. She wasn’t in town all the time, but we made the distance thing work okay, and she would make a point of stopping in during travel for a week or two here and there. We were supposed to get a place when the whole unicorn thing happened, and then I had to go. I think she was pretty mad that now I was the one traveling for work, which didn’t seem exactly fair.
Still, I’m missing her pretty bad those first few weeks on Unicorn Island. At first it’s all just libido. After a while that kind of ebbs, and I mostly just want her company, someone to talk to. Attempts to start up conversation with Putri don’t go far, what with her two-word answers to everything.

Then one morning, Ctesias is wonking like crazy because his horn’s stuck in the house, and he’s thrashing around so hard, I’m scared he’s gonna yank it down, so I don’t bother with the hazard suit. I run outside and put my arms around his neck to pull him free. His fur is rabbit-soft and warm, and as soon as I touch it, I get this kind of energy charge all over my whole body. Suddenly, all I can think about is sex. My head fills up with thoughts of women doing—well, I really don’t want to get into detail, so let’s just say I felt like I was a teenager again. I get Ctesias free, and I run back inside and for the next week or so, I can barely keep my hands off myself. It’s like I’ve never yanked it before ever, you know? You remember those first few days after you figure out you can do it and it feels like a superpower you never knew you had? Like that.

And this happens to me every single time. Sounds pretty great so far, right? Wrong. Skip ahead about eight months.

Monsoon season. I head down to the docks to get Putri’s supplies. A little ways from the island, I can see the shadow of intense rain. On the sister islands, the trees are whipping back and forth. But here’s it’s blue skies and sunshine. It always is here, unless Ctesias gets crabby about his food or something. Putri dumps a big box of Oreos on the dock, and then Yuka steps up from below decks. “Lee!” she yells to me, bouncing up and down. “Surprise!”

I’m just speechless. There are so many reasons why she shouldn’t be here. She scrambles up onto the pier and runs up to me, smashing herself against me and giving me a kiss I’m too surprised to return. She smells a little bit like mildew—I’m guessing it’s not great below Putri’s decks.

“How did you find me?” I wheeze.

She frowns. “I knew you couldn’t tell me. You went so quiet. Every time you came back to visit, you were more distant. You wouldn’t ever talk about what you were doing, and I guess I got scared you were in trouble. So I hunted you down with a detective. We tracked credit card receipts, found plane tickets, and then eventually Putri led me here.”

I stare at Putri. “You did what? Why did you bring her here?”

With a grunt, Putri dumps a big box of powdered strawberry lemonade on the dock. “She pay.”

“Don’t worry,” Yuka says. “She explained everything on the way over.”

“She explained things?”

Putri shrugs.

“Not that I totally believe her. I mean. . .” Yuka trails off, staring up over my shoulder. I don’t have to guess what she sees. I look back and there’s Ctesias, the farting, drooling beacon of light and magic. Mane billowing in the wind, and there isn’t a wind.

“Oh my god,” Yuka says, and she starts up the hill after him. “It’s real. I can’t believe it’s real.”

“Don’t get too close.”

“Why, is it dangerous? It’s so beautiful.” She keeps going.

“Not dangerous, exactly,” I say, and I hike up after her, because she’s plainly transfixed by the thing. Probably dreaming about riding it naked through a Trapper Keeper or something.

It whinnies and heads up the island, and she follows it into the trees.

I find her near my house, creeping up on Ctesias with her hand out, going, “Come here, boy!” like it’s a timid dog or something.

“Hey, be careful of the—” I say, too late to stop her from stepping in a big, clear puddle of unicorn shit. “Never mind, look, just don’t touch it.”

The unicorn nickers and bounds away from her. Multicolored light trails from its hooves, making an arc in the air.

She gapes. “Is that a—a—”

“A rainbow, yeah.”

“That’s so amazing, oh my god, Lee, you have the coolest job of anyone in the whole world.”

“I really don’t.”

“But it’s a rainbow just sitting there, it . . . when does it go away?”

“It doesn’t. Can you give me a hand with it?” I pick up one end of the rainbow. It feels a little like warm cotton candy. It’s not heavy; just awkward.

She babbles more to me about how all amazing this is as we cart the rainbow around the house and toss it down a hill, where there’s a big dump hole full of them all scattered and glowing and half-submerged in mud. No one’s sure what these things will do if they get out into the environment.

“Is that where you live?” she asks, in the same sort of tone of voice someone might ask if that’s a worm on your face. I’m about to invite her in to wash her hands—probably not great to get rainbow in your mouth—but then I figure I should tidy up a little. I say yeah, but ask her to wait a few. I run in, push stuff under the bed and put dishes in the sink, wash my hands and make sure my clothes aren’t gross.

When I get outside, she’s reaching out to Ctesias again, and he’s lowering his big white nose to be petted.

“No, don’t touch it!” I shout, but I’m too late. He nudges his nose forward, and I see her go all stiff and twitching like she touched a live wire.

She turns, staggering a little, and puts her hands down below her stomach, pressing in. “What—what was that?”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” I say. “See, the thing is, unicorns? They can only be touched by virgins.”

“But I touched it, and I’m not a—” She stares at me. “Oh my god, you mean that thing . . .”

“You’re a virgin again,” I say. “Happens to me every time I touch it. It sucks.”

“Wait, so that means the last few times you came to see me . . .”

“I was a virgin every time.”

“That’s why you were so bad at sex!”

I cough. “Uh, yeah. Probably.”

She rounds on Ctesias. “What the fuck. I can’t be a virgin again, you piece of shit!”

Ctesias farts musically and trots a little distance away. I’m pretty sure he’s laughing at us.

4. If you’re a unicorn keeper, that means you’re gay.


So Yuka follows me inside the house to avoid hate-murdering Ctesias, which seems a reasonable reaction to me, and did at the time, even before everything else that happened. She sits down on the bed, trying to get used to suddenly being in the full blush of youth again, or whatever you call it when magic resets your biology to the cusp of sexual maturity. So I heat up some water for a soup cup while she’s asking all these questions about what happened and how it works, and of course I don’t know anything. I explain we have to learn this kind of thing really slowly and carefully or the unicorn disappears. She gets this awful, unhappy smile and says we should just make it disappear on purpose, and I point out that then I’d be out of a job.

Which of course brings up the old argument of why I’m here in the first place, why I can’t just quit and come back home and she’ll find a job for me somewhere. Only this time, for the first time, I can tell her the real reasons: that if I quit on this after I swore up and down it was what I actually wanted to study, everyone will know for sure that I’m just a lazy shit. I’d be eating crow for the rest of my life.

Then she calls me stubborn and I call her controlling and we have a little fight, which is usual for us. Only afterward, we usually fool around, and I really don’t want to. She’s all up against me, putting my hand under her shirt, and I’m not going for it. Then she gets really upset and starts shaking a little and says I’ve gotten so distant that maybe we should just break up.

And I say, “Quit making such a big deal out of everything. I just don’t want to right now, that’s all.”

“You never want to anymore!” she shouts, and she throws my pillow at me.

“Crap,” I say, and she sees where I’m looking.

“Lee,” she says in this quiet voice, like she’s really far away, “why is there gay porn under your pillow?”

“It’s . . .” I try to think of a good reason. “The guy before me left it there.” This isn’t true, actually. I dumped all Fauzi’s magazines in the trash after he moved out. Then around a month later, Putri starts bringing them about once a month with the supplies. Says I’ll want them, and doesn’t listen when I swear up and down that I don’t.

“Under your pillow?”

Okay, so it was a dumb lie, but what was I supposed to say? I shrug.

“You came out here to get away from me, didn’t you? You couldn’t tell me you were gay.” Her eyes are angry and accusing.

I can feel the blush in my face. “That’s not true! I wasn’t gay at all then!”

“Then?”

“I mean.” I sit down on the floor, trying to think how to tell her what I can’t even tell myself. “It started about three months ago. I think it happens when you touch Ctesias. Or maybe just be around him. I think… I think he thinks unicorns are gay because we think they’re gay or something, and he makes it happen.”

She’s gone pale, getting half to her feet. “Should I be getting out of here now?”

“No, I don’t think so. I think it happens slowly. Like radiation poisoning or something.”

She sits down heavily on the cot. The magazine slides off and splays open to a particularly lurid display that I hate that I can’t stop looking at. “Maybe it’s just a phase, like, if you leave the island, it will stop?”

I shake my head. “I don’t think so. Even on vacations, it never gets any better.”

“There are doctors! Psychologists who can help you!”

“What, against magic? It’s not like I’m just confused, Yuka, it’s who I am now.”

Her eyebrows come together like two caterpillars that have decided to fight. “You’re an asshole, is what you are.”

Ctesias is wonking in alarm outside, but I ignore him. “You think I wanted this? This isn’t something I chose, it just happened to me! It’s not about you!”

“It’s not about you either. It’s just about whatever’s easiest. You never want to work at anything. You didn’t want a real job. You didn’t want to study a real field. You never wanted to work on our relationship. And now you’re just a—a gay virgin on Unicorn Island!”

5. You really never want to pet a unicorn.


In that moment, I hate her a little bit. “Yeah, well, you’re two of those three already,” I tell her. “So what does that say about you?”

She goes ice-cold. “That you’re pulling me down.”

Ctesias is wonking louder and more urgently.

“Honey?” a man’s voice says from outside, sounding concerned. “Honey, what’s going on here?”

She looks up. “Daddy?”

“What?” My skin prickles. “Your dad’s here?”

She looks out the window. “I don’t know how. He must have followed me.”

To this day, I don’t know why the prox alarm never went off. Maybe it got unplugged or short-circuited or something like that. Maybe her father’s boat just happened to be broadcasting on the same frequency that Putri’s boat uses, the one that shuts it off. I never find out. And in that moment, I can’t even think about it, because I’m scared to death.

Because I figured it out months ago, why no one with children is allowed near the island. I run out of the house. “Get back!” I shout. “You have to get away from here immediately! Run!”

Ctesias is freaking out, wonking and trotting back and forth, his eyes bulging, horn lowered.

“Easy, boy.” It’s Yuka’s dad. I’ve only met him a couple times, but I recognize him right away: tall, balding head, big black beard.

Remember before what I said about unicorns and beards? Yeah. Ctesias does a Muppet-flailing charge right toward Yuka’s dad. He scrambles backward, as anyone sensible would do when being charged by a solid ton of angry fantasy horse, but he slips on a big greasy pile of clear unicorn poo and falls backward.

Ctesias, incredibly stupid creature that he is, one lacking even the most basic concepts of object permanence, draws up short now that he can’t see the beard anymore. And nearly, nearly, everything is totally okay. He turns around, giving a little trot like he’s pleased with himself for ferociously braving down the fierce facial hair, and flicks his tail. A few strands of that tail flick across the nose of my girlfriend’s dad. And that’s enough. I see him gasp like I did the first time I touched Ctesias by accident, and there’s a whap! sound from inside the house.

That sound, I later figured out, was a miniature thunderclap from all the air rushing in where Yuka used to be. See, her dad’s now a virgin. And in Ctesias’s walnut-sized brain, that must mean that he never had kids. My girlfriend and her two brothers, never existed.

6. Unicorns don’t exist.


I know now it looks like I’m contradicting myself. But when I said unicorns are real and existed, I wasn’t lying. And by the time you get to fact number six here, as far as I know, I won’t be lying either. All that will have changed from the time you start reading to the time you finish.

Here’s the thing. Those monsters made me a virgin, turned me gay, and wiped my girlfriend out of existence. Except I can still remember her. We all can. Because unicorns were stupid. Why do I say were? Remember when I said unicorns disappear when you measure them? Yeah, well, look what you’re reading: everything I’ve learned and studied about unicorns. And if I get this up on all the websites I hope to—maybe Cracked, Buzzfeed, and a Reddit link would be helpful—even if you all think it’s fiction, I’ll have wiped those fuckers off the face of the planet. Because you all know what they’re like, now. There will be no place they can disappear to where they haven’t been “observed.” Maybe China or Siberia. And just in case this information isn’t really enough to make them disappear, here are a few more facts for you:

7. Unicorns stand about 16-20 hands at the withers and weigh approximately one ton.


8. Their eyes are typically pink, violet, or rainbow-colored, and their fur refracts a full color spectrum even when subjected to limited wavelengths of light.


9. At night, they glow in the dark, which is annoying when you’re trying to sleep.


10. When Marco Polo first witnessed unicorns in Indonesia, he was so horrified by their unearthly powers that he described them as having: “…a head like a wild boar's… They spend their time by preference wallowing in mud and slime. They are very ugly brutes to look at.” He hoped by doing so to deter anyone from seeking out these horrible creatures ever again.


Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Who Needs Pride, Anyway?

So every year, when gay pride comes up, the same old litany of complaints go up online: "Why does there have to be gay pride? Everyone would throw a fit if there were straight pride. Why are they so flamboyant? This doesn't help public image." Et cetera.

Recently I joked on Twitter that people who wonder why there's gay pride but not straight pride must live in buildings with alarms that also go off when there's not a fire.

I have a lot of gay followers and I speak a lot about gay advocacy issues without anyone really challenging me, but this time I got one. The same old arguments were brought up: special rights, not equal rights; gays are acting "entitled," etc., and I about lost my top. Instead, I decided to write all the things that I wished I could say every time. Here are the main things I see over and over, and my responses.

Why does there have to be gay pride?

Why? Because even despite all the wonderful advances lately, gays are still hated and discriminated against. In most states, it is legal for your boss to fire you if he finds out you're gay. He can't (legally) fire you just because you're Christian, or black, or a man, or disabled, but he can fire you if you love someone of the same gender. Or if he thinks you might. Many states are trying to make it legal for restaurants or stores to refuse you service if you identify as gay. And we won't even talk about the 76 countries where it's illegal to be gay at all, or the 10 countries where they may kill you for it (Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Mauritania, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, and United Arab Emirates). Brunei and Uganda have been working very hard to add themselves to that list.

But more than all of that, gay pride is important because all over the United States, people both young and old are being told that their sexuality is something deserving of shame. They are ridiculed, belittled, isolated, abused, beaten, and in some cases, pushed to the extremes of self-harm and suicide. Straight people, gay pride isn't about us saying we're better than you. It's our defiant affirmation that we don't deserve to be shamed for being who we are. It's a rejection of all the shame and abuse and ugliness that we've been made to feel about ourselves. It's reaching out to those who are still suffering, who still feel that shame. There are so many GLBTQ people out there who need to know, who badly need to see and hear, they were not made wrong. They need to be able to see their sexual identity as something good and positive, something both capable and worthy of love.

In some ways, pride is an unfortunate word, because the word has a number of meanings, and not all of them are positive. In Catholicism, pride is one of the seven deadly sins. A prideful person isn't an admirable one; no one likes someone who puts himself above everyone else. This isn't that kind of pride. It's the kind that announces: I have personal worth. I have self-respect. I am worth love, worth being treated as though I am as good as anyone else. If you have grown up without the need to hear others like you speak that message, without the need to affirm it yourself, then you are blessed. Not everyone has grown up with that blessing.

If there's a gay pride day, why not a straight pride day?

People with minority status hear variants on this argument a lot. (Why not white history month?)

Many people--myself included, as a child asked their parents, "If there's Mother's Day and Father's Day, when is Children's Day?" The answer was inevitably, "Every day is children's day." Why not a straight pride day? Why not a straight pride parade? Because you don't need it. The entire world caters to you all the time. The possibility of marrying and having kids is something you take for granted. When you go out in public with the person you love, you don't have to worry about the reactions of someone who might see you holding hands. You can have dinner together on Valentine's Day without strange looks. Nearly every couple you see on television is of your sexuality, and the fact that you like the opposite sex is not played for laughs, nor are you typecast as a particular stereotype because of who you love. All of society, all around you, will function on the assumption that you are a heterosexual. All marketing will pander to you. All your coworkers will understand your relationship. You will never, ever have to think about hiding the fact that you are straight. In many other ways, your life may be difficult, but your sexuality will never be one of them.

Many straight people take this for granted without even realizing it. It's so engrained in their psyches that if gays try to have just one day during which the general public atmosphere is about them, straights feel like it's an injustice. They feel like the gays are getting something special. They start complaining that gays are acting "entitled."

Look at how sinister and ugly that word looks in context. We're not entitled? Not even to one day? Not one parade? Not one moment where we can feel free and open, where we can dance and get a little drunk and dress like ourselves and kiss each other and do all the things in public that straight people do all the time without anyone ever commenting or complaining? That is exactly why we do need gay pride. We are entitled, as human freaking beings.

When you protest this, what you are really saying to us is, "Society should be about us all the time. This day doesn't explicitly include us, and that makes it unjust." This attitude is, frankly, kind of appalling. It's like walking out of a restaurant after a big meal, and getting mad at someone feeding the hungry because you didn't get a free sandwich. And that is the very definition of entitled--the attitude that if anyone anywhere is getting something, you deserve a piece.

Why do they have to be so flamboyant? This isn't helping their public relations!

Okay, let's be honest here. You aren't really concerned about the public relations, deep down, are you? Are you working in gay PR? Are you struggling to advance the cause, and all these raunchy gay pride parades keep stymieing your efforts? I'll lay money on that not being the case. I know what's really bothering you, because it used to bother me too: that these people are behaving in ways that you find rude, distasteful, or flat-out gross. That this isn't proper behavior, and it needs to stop.

I am going to be 100% honest here. I used to feel this way at Pride parades. I used to look around at people who were acting overtly sexual, or dressed in fetish gear, or just plain raunchy, or outright naked, and cringe. But I wasn't really concerned about how the public would view gays overall. Not really. I was concerned about how they would view me. I was concerned that my dad or my coworker would look on the news and see an image of a drag queen with an enormous prosthetic dildo raunchily miming sex with a priest on a public thoroughfare, and lump me in with them.

But here's what I didn't get, and what a lot of people still don't get: Gay pride parades are not about public relations. I mean come on, it's called the Gay Pride Parade, not the Tone It Down So We Can Get Along Parade. And you don't tone it down for a parade! You live it up! Dear outside world, when will you finally stop demanding that gay pride be about you? It's not about you. Don't get us wrong. We'd adore having you there. We cherish your love and support, and every single one of you that comes to our parade to cheer us on means the world to us. But we're not there to get along with you. It's the one day a year when if you want to play, you have to get along with us. And we have to get along with each other. This is the message of gay pride: you can be yourself. You can open up. Let your freak flag fly. The closet has no hold over you anymore. 

And hey, younger me, listen: that goes just as much for the priest-ramming drag queen that you disapprove of so much. Your disapproval means nothing. When you go to the parade, your comfort level is your own damn business. When you say, "Tone it down," or, "Don't be so flamboyant," what you are really saying is: "Hey! Back in the closet, you. Maybe not all the way. Just a little. No, a little more than that. LIT-tle more. There. Now you're the right level of Out." And you have no right to do that.

GLBTQ people spend their whole lives having to conform in large and small ways to the expectations of a society that still largely believes they should just shut up and be straight or at least pretend, damn it. Pride parades aren't about PR. They're a freaking break from it. For once, we get to let go of what anyone else thinks. For once we get to shut out the coworkers who expect us to smile and listen while they talk about girls, the teachers who tried to make us act more "feminine," the parents who ask themselves where they went wrong and mean us.

We work on PR the other 364 days. For the most part, those are still yours. We're not giving this one back.

Also, it's fun.

Seriously, have you been to a Pride parade? They're awesome. Sure, you're gonna see more skin than maybe you're prepared for, but who are you anyway, Queen Victoria? If you come down and laugh and dance and are ready to have a good time, you will be drawn in. Pride parades are like this big ocean of positive, happy vibes that are ready to lift you up and carry you off to Joy Island. Why on earth would you want to stop that? Who are you letting down if you shrug all that disapproval off your shoulders and just stop caring about it all for once? Wouldn't it be better to cheer? To dance?


Thursday, November 1, 2012

God of Clay Publication

So most of you now know (because I won't shut up about it) that Sofawolf has decided they would like to publish the novel I've been working on for more than two years, God of Clay. Originally supposed to be one book called The Fire Bearers, the story got too big for one book... and then too big for two. So now the plan is to release three books: God of Clay, Forest Gods, and God of Fire. My admittedly ambitious hope is to release one a year, starting with God of Clay, which is tentatively marked for release at Rainfurrest 2013. It's completed except for whatever final edits Sofawolf sends me, and we're looking at artists now.

In addition, I'm about 25% of the way through the first draft of Forest Gods, which is far bigger and more complex. It's the first time I've ever completely outlined a book from beginning to end before writing. I was warned by some people that outlining is a terrible idea; that it stifles creativity and prevents the story from growing organically, but I've found that exactly the opposite is true. Without worrying as much about the structure of my story, I'm freer to let the characters grow and develop and find their voices. It's an exciting process, and every day that I sit down to write, I'm glad to be doing it. I'm hoping to have the first draft of that done by April, and my beta readers are already getting the first look at it.

I am so, so excited, you guys. Sofawolf isn't strictly a narrow-niche publisher anymore; they've got recognition in the broader scifi/fantasy arena now, what with their artists receiving multiple Eisner nominations and Ursula Vernon's Digger winning a Hugo. They're looking to branch out, and so am I.
So what's it about?

God of Clay and its sequels are set in an ancient world, long before modern civilization rose and spread across the planet. On the edge of the great forest, straddling the edge of the savanna, a village struggles to settle their lives. They have been pushed ever southward by drought, fire, and the advance of the Firelands, the massive, uninhabitable desert that crawls inexorably southward. Clay, the middle son of the King, reveres the gods and seeks to serve and obey them, just as the stories of the people prescribe. There are older, stories, however---forgotten stories.

The leopard god, Doto, is the son of Kwaee, god of the forest. He remembers the stories of the fire bearers, the furless, apelike minions of Ogya, the  fire god, and how they led his advance a thousand years ago, burning the forest to feed his insatiable hunger. They were defeated and scattered to the far reaches of the world, but now they have returned, and made an encampment on the edge of the forest once more, and they have brought with them the terrible flames of old. Commanded by his father to bring back a fire bearer, he makes his way to their nest and capturesone, a weak and despicable thing that calls itself Clay. But on the journey back to Kwaee,  he will learn that nothing is what he thought.

Their two worlds are spiraling toward a terrible conflict once more, and invisible to all, Ogya kindles his own malevolent plans.

Monday, October 1, 2012

Weirdos Who Hate Multiplayer Games

There have been a growing tide of these antisocial jerks over the years, and I'm one of 'em.

Multiplayer video games have been around approximately as long as video games themselves (Hello, Pong!),  but over the last few years, they've seen a bit of an upswing. Many popular single-player franchises like Mass Effect and Assassin's Creed have all seen multiplayer modes added in--sometimes organically, sometimes awkwardly and cynically jammed in. The president of EA, Frank Gibeau, recently boasted that he had refused to green light any game that was strictly a singleplayer experience.


The backlash startled him. And it seems to startle and confuse a lot of people in the industry, both developers and players alike. David Vonderhaar, the game design director for Black Ops 2, the upcoming entry in the popular FPS, recently gained a bit of notoriety for saying, "As popular as Call of Duty is, there are a lot of people who don’t play multiplayer, and quite frankly, this bugs the shit out of us. They should all play multiplayer."


Why wouldn't people play multiplayer? Gamers who love multiplayer modes express a level of bafflement and anger at people who refuse to join in. I've followed a number of threads on this topic, and their proposed reasons eventually boil down to either, "you hate multiplayer games because you suck at them," or, "you are lying. You love multiplayer games. Everyone does, because multiplayer modes are just more fun."


Early this year, IGN conducted an informal poll of its readers to try to determine why it was that some of us just didn't want to play ball with the rest of them. Among popular answers were that people just played games to relax, that they didn't enjoy the competitive tone of multiplayer, that multiplayer was repetitive and mindless, and that they were turned off by the abusive attitudes of the other players. All these are good reasons to dislike multiplayer, but I don't feel that they get at the heart of what's wrong, at least for me and people I suspect are like me.

I have a friend who keeps trying to rope me into playing these games with him, and I have once or twice, and while the experience was not unpleasant, neither was it compelling. Just the mere fact of playing this game with another person was stressful on a mild but ever-present level. Like the mystified developers of these games and the industry that reports on them, I was confused by my reaction and struggled to find and articulate its source. Then I realized it had much less to do with the nature of the game and my experience of it. It wasn't that it wasn't fun, or that the people were abusive, or that it was repetitive and mindless. It wasn't that I disliked competition, or that I was closed-minded and unwilling to try new things, or even that I suck (although I certainly do suck at multiplayer, to a deep, abiding, and unredeemable level).

It wasn't about what I liked or disliked, what I could or couldn't do. It was about what I am: a goddamned introvert. For me, video games have always been, like books, a place I could go to recharge, to get away from people and disappear into the safety and comfort of my mindspace. I could be somebody else; I could explore a strange world; I could take part in a story; I could indulge my obsessive-compulsive desire to check off lists. In short, I could play. I could be a stealthy thief slinking along a rooftop, or a silent, stony warrior laying waste to an untamed wilderness. Without some chatty companion who at best is making continual, encouraging suggestions, and at worst is actively trying to destroy my playing experience. For us introverts, whenever there are other people around, we can't really play. People take energy and focus. There's always a level of discomfort, the same as when you're reading a book and someone is right behind you, reading over your shoulder. It's like that in multiplayer games. You're being observed, even engaged with, and that mere fact of other people means that the game changes from play to work.

Games were part of my private space, my secret garden where I could go to be alone and thrive. And I have always both loved and been fiercely protective of my gamespace. I don't want to let other people in there. It's mine.


And that's why I and other introverts react so strongly against the inexorable shift from single to multiplayer, from explorations of fantasy worlds to "social games" -- a horrible phrase, as oxymoronic as any introvert has ever heard. When we hear industry leaders stand up and say that the single player game is dying, or that Zynga owns the future of gaming, terrible things go on in our heads. That is our secret garden being bulldozed to make way for a shopping mall. 


"You need to have a social experience," Gibeau says, and he doesn't understand why it rankles. We hear these people speak with greedy enthusiasm about a future in which there is no world for the quiet introvert: all games will be multiplayer. And it's not rational, but instinctively, we fear this idea taking hold. We fear that one day, there will be no more reading books in your armchair; all books will be read in public in a chorus reading from a giant Kindle. There will be no more darkened living rooms and cinematic bliss; all movies will be watched in a crowded theater with live Twitter feeds scrolling down the sides. And there will be no more talking to yourself alone, because all words will be With Friends.

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Ideas, anyone? Anyone?

The question every writer gets asked the most--I'm told--is, "Where do you get your ideas?" It's so common that many writers just make up a rote answer to tell people. They trade answers with each other when they get together in their secret writers society meetings that you're not invited to, in which they talk about you, the fans, and make some seriously snarky comments about you all, let me tell you. But in general they have no good answer to this question because to them, there IS no answer. The ideas are all around them, all the time. Hounding them. Gnawing at them with tiny idea teeth. Keeping them awake. A better question might be: how do you get away from the ideas? I know that a number of writers distinctly believe that there is nothing special about them whatsoever: that everyone has ideas for writing all the time, and they just don't know to recognize them as ideas. They're unconscious notions, your brain toying with the world around you as you pass through it: questioning it, tilting it, testing it, and all of these are story ideas. You just have to learn to recognize it.

This could be true, I suppose, but I've never seen it in my life, despite trying. Ideas are very hard to come by: they must be scrabbled after and then defended with tooth and nail, as though they were gold and precious gems. It's been my experience that people who have an aptitude for a thing often don't recognize their aptitude as real talent. Because a thing is easy for them, it must be easy for everyone. To me, whistling a pleasant tune is as simple as breathing. I cannot fathom how someone else couldn't do it, and yet many people cannot whistle. So, too, I think some people's minds do not catch creatively on their worlds. I think they do not know how to say, "what if?" and "wouldn't it be strange?" and then follow those thoughts to anything approaching a story idea. So I envy and mildly resent people who have to beat these story ideas away with a kind of mental broom so they can focus on the ones they want. I'm lucky if I get two a year.

That said, right now I have three story ideas knocking around inside my head, and they all seem pretty good. And they're a bit insistent. When they start coming, it seems, they come in groups, hunting me like a pack of hyenas, like they're living things on the other side of reality that have sensed that maybe they can use me to get through to this side. Ideas attract ideas.

So maybe that's what it is with writers. Maybe it only takes having a few at a time, paying attention to them, using them, before the other ideas out there notice what you're doing and begin clamoring for their turn. I mentioned on Twitter that it's a little scary, and that's why I decided to write this post, because I felt like that needed a bit of followup. Why would it be scary? How is it scary?

Well, it's scary in the way that falling in love is scary. In fact, it feels kind of similar. Something from inside you is working, making you feel things and want things whether you feel like it or not. It's bigger than you, and you can't say no to it--well, maybe you could, but the idea of it is just awful, like the thought of turning down a million dollars. And you know it's going to change you in some way, take you somewhere. You don't know who you'll be or where you'll be afterward. And it's fantastic.

Come on, ideas. Let's do this thing.